


Things You Leave Behind

by 94BottlesOfSnapple



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Defenders Adjacent But Not Defenders Compliant, Elektra Lives AU, Foggy Nelson Angst, Hurt No Comfort, I Don't Know How To Fix This And Neither Will Matt, In Which Black Sky Means Cool Demonic Powers Instead Of Generic Kung Fu Skills, M/M, Matt/Elektra Is Not Endgame, Now Including: A Plot, Post-Season/Series 02, The Five Fingers Of The Hand Are In A Constant Thumb War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-06-18 21:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15495570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/94BottlesOfSnapple/pseuds/94BottlesOfSnapple
Summary: Elektra doesn't die. Matt doesn't stay.But taking the Devil out of Hell's Kitchen doesn't take away the dangers he left in his wake, and it doesn't erase Matt Murdock from the heart of his best friend.





	1. You'll Be Gone

**Author's Note:**

> This is just... Angst, pretty much. Yup. This story is what happens whenever I think about Season 2 and have Bad Feelings. So. It's not very nice. But at some point Matt's going to realize he Fucked Up Big Time and come back. Neither one of us have any idea how Matt can fix things with Foggy afterwards, but, well, I don't know how often I'm going to update this anyway and Matt doesn't show up for a while.
> 
> Anyways, an anon on Tumblr requested this story after I posted a snippet of it there, so. If you're still out there, my friend, here it is!

It’s two weeks after Karen was kidnapped by ninjas – and Foggy wishes to god that wasn’t a normal part of his world now – that he enters Matt’s apartment. Not for the first time, no, but this particular visit has a grieving finality to it that the others did not.

Before, he’d been searching. Hoping.

Nelson and Murdock is over, yeah, but even if. It’s just that… Foggy had to look after his own heart and his own mental stability, right? He had to. Because the Castle case and the freaking ninjas and Elektra all sure proved that Matt wasn’t gonna do it for him. But his heart’s not hard enough to survive cutting Matt Murdock out of it completely. They’ve been friends for ten years, and even if that doesn’t mean something to Matt it means something to Foggy.

He’d just wanted some proof that Matt was alive. That he was ok.

The first three days were dedicated to that. Searching, alone. Ducking in through Matt’s roof access to check the apartment, again, again, just in case. Storming Elektra Natchios’s damningly empty penthouse just in case she and Matt had holed up there.

Not telling anyone anything because even if Matt was off the grid Foggy still would never compromise his identity. Just in case.

Trying, alone, to slot the rich, reckless, mean-spirited debutante from college into the shape of a fucking ninja warrior.

None of which did anything for Foggy’s rapidly fraying sanity. Karen confronted him on the fourth day, and Foggy split open.

* * *

“Foggy, I’m not stupid,” Karen had said with her chin lifted and her eyes sharp. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Matt wasn’t there. He wasn’t there and Foggy didn’t know where he was, and Karen needed to know why. So he told her. About Matt and Daredevil and the fight. About Elektra and the ninjas and the lies. He stopped short of the last three words he had left – “I love him” – but the way Karen looked at him meant she probably didn’t need them spoken aloud to hear them. Foggy’s transparent that way, despite his namesake.

“I… I don’t know what else to do,” he admitted, because at that point his dignity was a farce anyway. “I’m at the end of my rope, Karen.”

Karen tried for a smile, reached out to brush a hand against his cheek.

“Well. I am a journalist now,” she said. “I can try to shake loose some leads for us.”

And she did.

In probably the worst way possible.

“I found a lead,” Karen said a week later, standing in Foggy’s brand new office at HC&B like she belonged there – straight-backed, strong, un-soft.

He’d just come in for the morning, after another compulsive trip to Matt’s empty apartment. Foggy’s breath caught painfully in his lungs.

“Yeah?” he croaked out.

Karen nodded contemplatively, gazed out the window.

“Frank was there, that night. I tracked him down again and asked him what… What happened.”

Foggy wanted to cover his ears and shout ‘lalala’ as loud as he could because that was so, so illegal and the thought of Frank Castle anywhere near Karen made him shudder. Karen’s tougher than him like that.

“Frank said he saw them leave together that night,” she said, measured and firm even though her hands were trembling. “Matt and that woman. Towards the airport. I’m so—” Only then did her voice hitch. “God, I’m so sorry, Foggy.”

He laughed bleakly. Karen was the one Matt cheated on and even she felt sorry for Foggy.

“No, it’s…” He sighed. “I’m the one who’s sorry. If I’d… I knew how she affected him, last time. In college. With you and Matt together, I should have warned you about her the second I knew she was back. You didn’t deserve any of that.”

Karen reached out slowly, squeezed Foggy’s shoulder.

“No,” she said simply. “I didn’t. But you don’t deserve… He shouldn’t have done this to you either.”

Foggy knew that she was right, on an intellectual level. He was just having a little trouble feeling it, was all.

_Worthless_ , breathed the voice in his head that sounded too much like Rosalind Sharpe. _Useless. You weren’t even worth saying goodbye to, were you? Look how little he cared. How could you fall for that act for ten years?_

That wasn’t fair, and Foggy knew it. Not fair to himself and not fair to Matt. Matt who cried when they fought. Who suggested Nelson and Murdock instead of Murdock and Nelson. It still… It still hurt, though. Still felt true even when he knew it wasn’t, the way his biological mother’s barbs had always felt true.

“Thanks,” he said anyway, trying not to let it show on his face.

Then, with another sad smile and a brief kiss to Foggy’s cheek, Karen slipped out the door of the office and down the hall. Foggy locked the office door behind him, fell into his desk chair, and pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes.

It didn’t stop him from crying.

* * *

Perhaps understandably, it’s taken Foggy three days to work himself up to confront the apartment without a sick, lingering hope in his chest. The airport. The fucking airport. Foggy tries to harden his resolve with anger, indignation. The two of them are probably having athletic sex on a Mediterranean beach because they’re both assholes that never think about anyone but themselves.

It’s not… True, though. Well, the sex part might be. But it’s only when he’s drunk on Elektra that Matt stops caring about other people. Stops letting anything or anyone but her in. If he were an asshole all the time, Foggy never would have fallen in—

Foggy shakes his head, hair swishing.

Not the time.

There’s no sign that anyone’s been in the apartment in a long time. And even with the glaring light of the billboard flooding through the windows, Matt’s apartment feels washed-out, dark and sparse without him. The familiar landscape is ominous just in its emptiness. Foggy double checks every nook and cranny anyway, his heart pounding unevenly in his chest. No one jumps out of the few shadows that remain. There’s no sound in the whole apartment except what Foggy produces in his vigil.

When he makes his way through the fridge and cupboards, cleaning out expired food, he can finally admit he’s stalling. But it’s work that needs to be done anyway, and Foggy can afford to be kind to himself, careful with himself, since the universe doesn’t seem inclined to do it.

When that’s all done, he spends three minutes sitting on Matt’s couch and working up his nerve again.

Then Foggy finally opens the closet containing Matt’s trunk.

He’s not sure what he’s more afraid of – finding everything there, or finding it all gone. Neither seems like a positive option.

The trunk is still inside.

Foggy flips its lid, his heart still pounding with some unnamable feeling. Everything is in place. All Jack’s boxing memorabilia. Foggy lifts it out gently, sets it aside. The red suit isn’t in the trunk, but the old black outfit is. Running a thumb over the mask, Foggy is hit with a sensation like a hand fisted over his heart.

If Matt were going to take these things, he would have taken them. But he hasn’t. And that’s the worst part, maybe. Elektra’s rich, after all. She can afford new silk sheets, nice clothes, knickknacks if they happen to want any… But there’s no replacing the mementos of Battlin’ Jack Murdock, not with all the money in the world.

“It’s ok,” Foggy says quietly as he places them back into the trunk. “I’ve gotcha, buddy.”

Matt… Matt won’t be back. No, Foggy’s pretty sure of that now. Between the disastrous last couple of months and Frank’s words to Karen and Foggy’s experiences with Matt and Elektra ten years ago… There’s little doubt in his mind that Matt has shed his entire life, everything but that red suit, and gone with Elektra somewhere Foggy can’t follow.

But still, still… These things aren’t trash and they don’t deserve to be treated like it. And Foggy’s moving anyways. His new apartment has room for this.

He gathers a few other things, detritus made valuable by his own stupid emotions more than any real worth. Matt’s glasses. A worn Columbia sweatshirt. Three audiobooks, Jack Murdock’s tattered Bible, a single plastic dinosaur. He bundles it all into one of the silk bedsheets, twists it up into a knapsack. Goes back and adds Matt’s most-used accessibility equipment. Just in case, he tells himself, knowing it’s not.

The whole ritual reminds Foggy of cleaning out his great-grandmother’s place after her death and the thought makes his gut churn with nausea. He pushes past it, though, forces himself to continue. Matt isn’t dead, and wherever he is he’s doing exactly what he wants to, just the way he always has. It’s just that this time what he wants doesn’t include Foggy Nelson.

And that’s… It’s… Foggy shakes his head, brings himself back to the matter at hand. There will be time for all that later. Further sorting of emotions and things. Donations or storage units or pawning. Later. For the moment, these most important items need to be preserved. Rescued. Whether it’s for himself or the ghost of Jack Murdock or the Matt that Foggy holds in his memories – eighteen and bitter and as bright as any star, the one who would someday smile and say ‘Nelson and Murdock’. Maybe all three.

So Foggy loops the knapsack over his shoulder and hefts the trunk into his arms and carries them safely home.


	2. Anywhere But Here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right, two chapters for the price of one! 
> 
> Well, this one has the exchange I posted to Tumblr in it, so I figured I might as well put it up too.

Sometimes, Foggy’s thoughts sound like Matt. And he hates that. Hates it so much, because how can he have the right to—

“Shut up, I don’t want to hear it. You chose Elektra over us. Over me,” is what he wants to say in those moments.

But there’s no point arguing with hallucinations. Matt is long gone. And this time… This time he’s not coming back. This time there won’t be a breakup to fling Matt back into Foggy’s orbit. Wherever he and Elektra are now, whatever they’re doing, it shouldn’t matter. But it does. To Foggy, it does, and the thought hollows him out.

But he’s always needed Matt more than Matt’s needed him. It’s nothing new, even if Foggy hasn’t always been aware of it. And Foggy Nelson is a man made of momentum.

He slogs along. Puts one heavy foot in front of the other. Smiles, even. Jokes. Karen doesn’t buy it, he doesn’t think. She knows too much about the inside of Foggy’s heart to believe the act. But she doesn’t push either, and that’s good. Marci pushes – to the point of breathless pain. That’s good too because sometimes you need to hurt to stop hurting. And Jessica Jones, his newest and most troublesome client, drowns them both in cheap whiskey – they don’t talk about any of the things that make drinking so appealing, but it’s nice not to drink alone.

So yeah, Matt left a gaping, festering hole in Foggy’s heart, even Foggy can’t deny that, but he has more to live for. His family, his friends, his career… He doesn’t… It’s not like he’s suicidal or anything. It’s fine. Foggy can almost convince himself, on the good days. Almost. On those days, the seconds his mind flits to Matt only snag in his chest for the briefest of moments. The world is regaining equilibrium – even if the wrong kind.

Of course it’s only his luck that the moment Foggy dares to think this, he ends up tied to a metal chair in some drafty warehouse, drugged to the gills.

* * *

The thing is, it’s stupid of him. Not the slogging or trying to move on, because that part might even be admirable, but the fact that as usual he doesn’t consider all the variables. That was what Matt had been good at, those sorts of considerations were where they worked best together – Matt gathering all the missing pieces, slotting them into place, and Foggy making sense of the picture they created.

No, the stupid thing is that without the Daredevil to consider, Foggy let all thought of Wilson Fisk slip through his fingers. Because after all, they’d never even met face to face. Foggy hates Fisk, what Fisk tried to do to their city, what he did to Elena and Ben, but Fisk isn’t his nemesis. And Foggy doesn’t particularly consider himself Fisk’s. In truth, Foggy is more an accessory to Fisk’s real nemesis – Daredevil. Which is why the news of Fisk’s release – one of many after all of DA Reyes’ scandals come to light – doesn’t burn with ice-cold fear. Daredevil isn’t around to be attacked. So the news just settles low in Foggy’s gut and smolders with indignation, buries itself beneath the tide of Life-Without-Matt that threatens to drown him if he doesn’t put all his attention toward staying afloat. In the end, that’s still careless of him.

Not that Foggy even realizes who has him, at first. With Nelson and Murdock closed, he’s not exactly taking on cases with helpless clients and powerful adversaries, but rich douchebags have their enemies too and his first thought is that it has something to do with the Henderson case. The second is that maybe Jones got in a little deep with someone scary and they decided to lay into the chubby lawyer instead of the badass PI with super strength. Which, y’know, fair. Foggy’s pragmatic, he gets that. He wouldn’t wanna go after Jones directly either.

But then a rumbling, choked voice speaks, and Foggy understands.

“Hello Mr. Nelson,” says Wilson Fisk.

Everything is fuzzy and weightless and wrong. Foggy knows distantly that he should be afraid but he’s too afloat for the realization to have any clout. Even then, he thinks maybe he’d be too exhausted for fear. The room is swaying underneath him, though the ropes binding him are tight enough to hurt, should hold him in place.

“Hi,” Foggy manages, voice garbled and numb. “Nice place.”

That pulls a soft exhale of amusement from Fisk’s mouth.

“Yes, I… I suppose this is a little… Crude, isn’t it?” he says, glancing around the warehouse and nodding. “I don’t… Usually handle my problems in this manner. Don’t commit violence for the sake of violence, or because I enjoy it.”

Foggy finds himself nodding a little, despite it all. Sounds reasonable. Totally nuts, but reasonable nonetheless. It makes him think of that day, with Matt pale and broken and half-dead on the couch, and the accusations that spilled out of Foggy’s mouth then.

“I thought,” Fisk continues, still treading slowly across the concrete, “that I was doing what I did because I love this city. Because I wanted to help it, to make it thrive. But that… I suppose that is something failure taught me. I am not the man I thought I was. And that’s fine. I can only ever be who I am, don’t you agree, Mr. Nelson?”

Foggy manages a thoughtful noise, his brain still tripping over the words, trying to understand them past the haze. Wilson Fisk’s mouth lifts in a mirthless smile.

“Yes,” he says, as though Foggy has actually answered. “I thought you might. I believe I… I discounted you before, Mr. Nelson. And that is a shame. You have a level of, of practicality that I admire. Perhaps you’re not as flashy as your partner, but there is a steel core to you. And you want things, things for yourself. Some people might call that selfish, but it’s really just the true character of this city. Yours and mine. I thought I loved my home, Mr. Nelson, but what I truly wanted was to destroy it in its ugliness and create something new in its place. Something beautiful, and mine. It’s an urge I suspect you may have as well.”

Foggy… Kind of doubts that. The only things he’s ever destroyed are his own liver and his relationship with Matt. Neither one was pleasant, and although he gives himself credit for cleaning up the debris of his life he doesn’t have any delusions that he’s built anything new or beautiful. Sometimes pain is just pain.

“And there is so much ugliness in this city,” Fisk continues. “I know you’ve seen it. Felt it. Perhaps you’ve even participated in it, as I have. Perhaps not. But I’ve strayed from the topic at hand. I suppose my point is that while you might consider this revenge, and it is, in a way… It’s not complete without your partner. He’s the one I’ve been looking for. Where is he, Mr. Nelson?”

Foggy blinks slowly, shakes his head a little like he can push away the effect of the drugs. It just makes him dizzier. Matt could probably will away sedatives with, like, meditation or something. Asshole. Foggy does not have any such superpower. He also doesn’t know how to meditate.

“Where is he?” Fisk demands again in his choking, gravelly voice.

Foggy’s unprepared for his input to be necessary, Fisk’s been monologuing so long.

“Whuh…?” he manages ineloquently.

“Matthew. Michael. Murdock. Where is he?!”

A strangled noise hits the air, something ugly halfway between a laugh and a sob. It takes Foggy a moment to realize he’s the one who made it. No point in lying, they’re both destined to be let down by the truth.

“I don’t even know, man,” Foggy admits blearily, “he fucked right off months ago. Could be in fucking… Peru by now. Morocco. Japan. God knows.”

But Fisk just shakes his head, clenches a fist in the front of Foggy’s shirt.

“You’re the thing he cares about most,” he tells Foggy, with a laughable amount of certainty. “He wouldn’t leave you behind. Not after I threatened your life to his face.”

And doesn’t that just add a whole fun new dimension to this absolute shitfest? Not only did Matt ditch him for Elektra without so much as a goodbye, he did it after somehow settling the crosshairs firmly on Foggy. A punch from one of Fisk’s massive hands would probably hurt less. Foggy finds he’s probably going to get the chance to find out firsthand.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” he forces out past the lump in his throat.

He was right, Foggy deduces when he takes a blow to the face. His eye and his nose both hurt like a bitch but the fact that Matt’s the reason he’s here definitely hurts worse. Cool.

“I am not a patient man, Mr. Nelson. Tell me where he is!”

“I said he’s not here! Fuck off!”

This exchange continues for a while, interspersed with hits from Fisk’s hands that rattle Foggy down to the bones. But there’s only one answer to the question. Matt isn’t here. He’s not here. If he were here, he would save Foggy, but he’s not, and he won’t be, so it’s just him and Fisk until…

Well, the outcome is pretty obvious, isn’t it?

Foggy’s not sure if it’s the drugs or his usual false bravado that allows him to laugh in Fisk’s terrifying, slowly purpling face.

“If you’re waiting around for Matt then you might as well kill me now,” he slurs, finds a kind of satisfaction in that Matt’s abandonment can rankle Fisk too. “He’s never comin’ back.”

“I have no doubt he’ll be back. But if it’s true that he isn’t here now, and I… I believe you that it is… Perhaps that would be more fitting,” Fisk spits, clamping meaty hands around Foggy’s throat. “To leave your body in an alley for him to find when he returns. The same one his father was killed in, perhaps?”

And no matter the other emotions swamping him, that sends a flood of white-hot rage surging through Foggy’s veins because—because Matt has been through so much and even if he never comes back, even if he never finds out that that’s what Fisk did with Foggy’s body… Even then—

“Fuck you,” rasps Foggy, lightheaded, blinking red and black spots from his vision. “ _Fuck you_. Asshole! How much bigger and stronger than me are you and you’ve got me tied to a chair! No wonder Daredevil kicked the shit out of you! Fuck you and your build something better bullshit, you—Any world built in your image doesn’t deserve to exist—”

The hands leave Foggy’s throat, but only so one can deliver a sharp blow to Foggy’s temple that sends him reeling.

“ _Enough_!”

Fisk rips Foggy from the chair, tearing through his restraints like they’re made of paper. The red marks and deep scratches they leave on Foggy’s arms proves that they’re definitely _not_ paper, though. That’s all Foggy has time to fuzzily consider before he’s being slammed into a pillar. The back of his head cracks against it and he whites out for a second.

Fisk is snarling like an animal, biting out words like ‘pay’ and ‘destroy’. ‘Burn’ even, once. But Foggy’s hearing flickers in and out along with his awareness. And what does it matter what Fisk is saying? He’s gonna kill Foggy anyway, and Matt’s long gone and out of danger, and he hasn’t made a single mention of Karen so she’s probably safe.

As Foggy drifts he wonders if maybe this is meditation. Like, probably _not_ , he thinks, but maybe it feels similar. Loose and empty and floating, except when the world bursts in hot and sharp and painful in a way that makes him think of the sudden wail of an ambulance siren.

He’s thrust fully back into himself at the sound of an almighty crash. The concrete wall of the building explodes inward, sending rubble flying in all directions, and Fisk drops Foggy to turn towards the threat.

Foggy’s vision is weak and kind of grainy, although he’s not sure if that’s the swelling of his eye or the blows to his occipital lobe – which, _fun_ , he _loves_ having to consider potential brain damage. Anyway, the point is even though his sight is wonky as hell, he gets a pretty good view of Jones laying Fisk flat in one punch. He grins, although the expression is wobbly, and lets himself drift off on the wings of that satisfaction.


	3. Convalescence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy wakes up in the hospital. Matt's not there, obviously, but that doesn't mean he doesn't get any visitors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking there's gonna be about two-ish more chapters following Foggy, and then we'll finally see what Matt's been up to. As you may have guessed from the tags, I don't have a whole lot planned after Matt's return to Hell's Kitchen because uh How Exactly Do You Fix This? But maybe by then something will have occurred to me.

Foggy wakes up to the annoying, high-pitched beep of a heart monitor.

“Awesome,” he slurs into the scratchy hospital pillow.

He takes a minute to feel good that his sarcasm is still intact even when the rest of him feels like crunched up bits and pieces glued clumsily back together. God, is he even _on_ any painkillers? Well, ok, he’s in the hospital so sources point to yes but. Still. Son of a bitch. How did Matt do this week after week?

Ugh. Matt.

Fuck Matt.

The grumpy, irritated part of Foggy wants to roll over and huff out an angry breath like he’s ignoring someone. The rational passed-law-school part of him knows instantly that if lying still hurts this much that moving would be a spectacularly bad idea. He hopes, vindictively, that Fisk hurts as much as he does right now. It’s a safe bet, since Jones can, you know, punch through freaking concrete like it’s papier-mâché. Also even if she didn’t have superstrength, she’s got some serious guns for such a tiny chick. There’s like maybe a tiny part of him that finds her really hot, but the rest of him is busy picking her up from the police station fifty times a week because of trespassing and public intoxication charges. So.

Right. Painkillers. Need some more of those.

He fumbles around for a few minutes and finally manages to find the button to call a nurse.

His nurse’s name is Hailey. She’s in her forties and she calls him ‘hon’ and gives him another dose of painkillers. Foggy likes Hailey a lot.

“You are,” he tells her solemnly, taking her hand in his, “my most second favorite nurse ever.”

“And who’s your first favorite?” Hailey teases after a few chuckles.

Foggy’s feeling a little fuzzy but the question is an easy one.

“Claire Temple,” he explains. “She stitched up my best friend a bunch of times even though he’s an asshole, and she didn’t even complain. Also she’s very pretty. Yup, Claire is the best. But you, Hailey, you are an angel in human form and so you get to be second best.”

Hailey stifles another bout of laughter.

“I’m honored,” she says, slipping her hand out of his and patting it lightly. “You just rest now, hon, and hit the button if you need anything, alright?”

“Mmhmm,” Foggy mumbles, blinking slowly. “Yup, sure… Sure thing…”

A few more blinks and a yawn and he’s asleep once more.

* * *

When Foggy wakes next, there’s a glass of water on the table next to him in easy reach. He sips it slowly, looks around the empty hospital room, and pointedly doesn’t think about anything.

Brett’s the first visitor in the door once the nurses realize Foggy’s up, probably because Matt is Foggy’s emergency contact and he’s off in freaking Tahiti or something fighting scantily clad ninjas. The thought makes Foggy snort water up his nose, which hurts, but he’s a little buoyed by his own brilliant sense of humor in this trying time.

“Hi, Brett,” Foggy coughs, setting his water aside. “To what do I owe this dubious honor?”

The look Foggy gets in response isn’t the usual mild irritation that tends to characterize his relationship with Brett. Instead, it’s… Troubled. Cautious. Foggy doesn’t like that at all.

“Look, man, I…” Bret sighs, takes off his uniform hat and fiddles with it. “I know this isn’t ideal, but… I need to take your statement. About what happened with Jones and Fisk. Things… The media’s already been in enough of a frenzy with all these enhanced people running around. They’re definitely gonna heat up about this, and I need to get it cleared up as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, sure thing.”

And it’s actually… It’s kind of easy to talk about it? Which is weird because Foggy feels sure that he’s probably supposed to freak out a little as he recounts his near-death-experience. But he’s neatly detached from the whole thing. Even mentioning Matt – that Fisk had been looking for him too – isn’t as hard as it’s been every other time. Brett leaves with an unsettled look on his face and an admonishment to rest. He also sets a little bouquet of sunflowers from Bess on Foggy’s side table before he goes. Foggy spends twenty-odd minutes staring at the yellow petals and wondering why he’s not in the middle of a panic attack. Eventually he gets bored of navel-gazing and decides to sleep on it.

That turns out to be a mistake.

Foggy wakes, hands scrabbling at his throat, from a nightmare of being suffocated. He ends up hyperventilating so badly the nurses have to stick one of those plastic tubes in his nose to give him oxygen. It takes probably half an hour to totally calm down and convince the hospital staff that he’s fine to be alone in the room.

His head hurts so badly that he can feel his pain in colors – sparks of red and white. But despite what daytime soaps have taught him, there is no convenient amnesia attached to bottle up all the unpleasant memories. Fisk’s snarl of rage, a meaty hand around Foggy’s throat… And further back, an empty apartment. The moment he truly knew in his heart that Matt had left. He knows that one will still figure more frequently in his nightmares than the torture, and isn’t that just pathetic?

Foggy’s breath stutters out of his chest in silent sobs anyway. He’s hurt and he’s tired and he’s beyond caring about dignity. At least, he thinks bitterly, he doesn’t have to lie there wondering if Matt will finally visit him in the hospital. Matt’s a thousand miles away with Elektra and he doesn’t care.

It’s almost nice to have things so clearly delineated.

When he’s finally done crying and has hopefully wiped all the tears off his face, Foggy presses the call button again to tell Hailey that the painkillers are wearing off.

* * *

Hogarth actually deigns to come see him in person. She also gives him some time off, which is both reasonable and nicer than he expected her to be. He doesn’t mention that out loud in case she’s insulted by it.

When Marci drops in later, she tells him she’ll be taking on his cases in addition to her own. Foggy’s only on two, currently, but it’s still a relief to know someone competent is handling the proceedings. She’s also brought the previously-dubbed Foggy Bear from Foggy’s apartment. He may or may not shamelessly cuddle it. A man is entitled to cuddle stuffed animals when a mob kingpin tries to kill him, ok? Also gender is a social construct and ‘manliness’ is overrated.

They talk a little bit, rib each other about work, but after a few minutes Marci’s expression changes. There’s a tension to it, and he can see her face going a little pink with anger even under her foundation.

“He should be here,” she says without preamble, clenching her hands tight around the strap of the purse sitting in her lap. “God, that—he should _be here_. If I _ever_ see him again—”

She doesn’t elaborate, but they both know who ‘he’ is. Marci will, in all probability, never get the chance to act on her vague threats. But the fact that she’s willing to make them at all on Foggy’s behalf is touching.

“Thanks, Marce,” he tells her quietly, and they both muster up weak smiles.

There isn’t really anything to say after that, but Marci stays with him for another half an hour – until she can’t possibly stretch her lunch break any longer.

* * *

Karen’s been in pursuit of a particular story for The Bulletin all month. She’s ceaseless in searching for the truth. So Foggy’s actually more surprised that she hears about his injuries as quickly as she does. As usual, she’s also got the scoop on the incident before she even walks in the door of his hospital room.

“The police aren’t saying much,” she admits, biting her thumbnail in agitation as she plops into the chair by his bed. “But the damaged building speaks for itself, and a witness saw Fisk being taken away in an ambulance under guard.”

Foggy laughs, softer than he would otherwise because his ribs are tender.

“Jones saved the day,” he admits. “No idea how she found me so fast, though, you’d have to ask her. And probably bribe her. You know, with hooch. On the bright side, she likes the awful cheap stuff that would dissolve a weaker human’s stomach. I bet if you got her the eel she’d sing like a canary.” Foggy frowns, shakes his head. “Actually no, Jones isn’t the canary type. She’d probably sing like a scary death vulture, I don’t know.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Karen replies placatingly, and she’s polite enough to press her lips tight together after that instead of laughing at him.

“As her lawyer, I’m going to recommend that anything she tells you is off the record, though, so don’t even think about telling her I green-lighted an exclusive or something, Miss Page.”

He wags a finger at her – carefully, to avoid jostling his injuries – in the hopes of getting another smile. Unfortunately, something about the remark has Karen’s expression dropping into something more serious and intense. She fiddles with a strand of her long strawberry-blonde hair and bites her lip.

“Foggy… Would—? I… Would _you_ consider talking about it? On the record?” she asks.

“Karen—”

“I already got the go ahead from Ellison. I… I want to write an article about this,” Karen tells him hurriedly. “The rest of the media will be on it soon enough anyway. I want the first take to be yours. Ours.”

“Brett won’t like it if you post a story before the police can get their own handle on it,” Foggy warns her. “Hell, no one on the force will.”

“I don’t care. People—people need to know about this, Foggy. And if… If _he’s_ out there, maybe…”

She trails off, but, like with Marci, the ‘he’ in question is pretty easy to determine. Foggy… Kind of doubts Matt’s paying any attention to Hell’s Kitchen. Otherwise, his guilt complex and his righteous anger would probably have sent him running straight home the second Fisk was released. But if it makes Karen feel better to think so… Foggy’s not going to disabuse her of the notion.

And anyway, cops and defense attorneys are mortal enemies. Foggy would have to do way worse to irreparably damage his quarter-century-long rivalry with Brett.

So Foggy tells Karen everything, because she’s his friend, and only the stuff he thinks he can get away with spilling is on the record, because Foggy’s not an idiot. Afterwards, Karen reveals that she snuck him in a king size Three Musketeers bar because she’s an angel like that.

He scarfs it all in one sitting and has no regrets because. Come on. Chocolate.

* * *

His family is out at some cousin or other’s wedding in Ohio, so they can’t make it to the hospital, but Bess must have tipped them off because Foggy gets about ten phone calls over the next day. After his last two notable hospital visits, he’s gotten used to fielding their worry. And besides, he’s got real actual health insurance now through HC&B, so his hospital stay isn’t even going to be a huge financial blow. That, he knows, is a load off his mother’s mind, and it’s a load off his own too.

Hooray for gainful employment.

* * *

It’s the second and hopefully final day of his hospitalization when an unexpected but familiar face peeks through the doorway.

“Hi Claire.”

Her mouth twitches for a second, like she wants to yell at him, but all that comes out is an exhausted sigh.

“What’s up, Thug Life,” Claire replies at last with a ghost of a smile. “Karen called. I’m glad at least someone has the sense to come to the hospital.”

“You know me. Always eager to please beautiful women.”

Claire laughs at that, but they can both tell her heart isn’t in it. When she settles in the chair by his bed, her posture is uncomfortable. Foggy’s not sure whether that’s to do with him or something else entirely.

“I’m guessing you still haven’t heard from…”

Foggy kind of wishes people would stop obliquely bringing up Matt. But. He gets it. Matt’s kind of the only connection he and Claire have.

“No,” he admits. “Nah. Nothing. So, I heard you’re moving to Harlem?”

“Back to Harlem,” corrects Claire. “I grew up there. But… Yeah. It’s… Metro General didn’t leave me with a lot of job prospects after the way I walked out.”

Her exhale after that admission is half-sigh, half-laugh.

“Hey, if I run into a rich superhero I’ll send ‘em your way,” Foggy jokes, just to try to lift the exhaustion from her face.

It works, a little.

“I think that’s an oxymoron.”

“Hey, if Batman comics and Tony Stark have taught me anything, it’s that there’s gotta be some vigilante out there with enough cash to properly compensate you for your stupendous medical care.”

That nets him a full laugh, though quiet. Claire scrubs a hand through her hair.

“Thanks.”

They chat for a while longer, but eventually Foggy gets tired again and Claire takes her leave so he can sleep.

* * *

The nightmares continue with annoying regularity, and as he’s being discharged the doctors recommend he see a psychiatrist.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Foggy says, and smiles coolly.

Because he doesn’t. And even if he did, he’s got too much to think about. Too much to consider. The benefits of talk therapy are many, but unless there’s a psychiatrist out there who specializes in superhero shit, Foggy thinks they’re probably not ready for the brand of crazy the last few years of his life would unleash upon them.

So he’s going to have to pass on some probably sorely-needed anti-anxiety medication, but whatever. He’ll just have to continue to badly self-medicate with alcohol or cut back on his drinking and take over-the-counter sleeping pills. That’s life for you.

And even though the nightmares wake him up three times on his first night at home, Foggy’s just glad to be sleeping in his own bed again.


	4. Me and My Shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy and Jessica Jones have it out. Life goes on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finally back from vacationnnnnn!! With hopefully some good ideas for next chapter saved on my phone!!

She didn’t come visit Foggy in the hospital, but after he’s out Jones doesn’t let him out of her sight for a week. She shows up at his door at 8am on the dot his first morning home and knocks in a way that would be considered violent for anyone else but which is remarkably restrained for a hungover woman with superstrength.

“Jones,” Foggy greets, wary and startled. “I didn’t realize you existed before ten-thirty. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She scrutinizes him with squinted eyes, nods, and shoulders her way into the apartment. Immediately, she homes in on his coffee pot and hijacks it.

“No reason,” she tells him with such a lack of shame for her bald-faced lie that Foggy needs to take a moment to recalibrate. “Heard you got home last night. Trish wanted to know if you were doing ok on your own.”

“Made my own coffee and everything,” Foggy replies pointedly.

It doesn’t stop Jones from snagging Foggy’s ‘World’s Okayest Boss’ mug – a gift from Karen back during the light-hearted just-post-Fisk days at Nelson and Murdock – out of his cupboard and filling it for herself. But then, Foggy hadn’t really expected it would. He just likes to give vent to his feelings every now and again because he can.

“So,” Jones says, between inelegant slugs of coffee – _sweet baby Jesus, she drinks it like she drinks whiskey_ , Foggy thinks, slightly ill – “What are we doing today?”

“I,” Foggy corrects, “am going to sit around in my pajamas and watch live action Disney channel movies on Netflix because I can and also because Hogarth gave me the week off. You, Jones, should probably be heading in to your PI office or something.”

Jones grunts. Even disheveled – her usual state, but this morning gratifyingly more ‘rolled out of bed’ than ‘punched in the face’ – she has a way of looking elfin and pretty. In like, a grungy, longhaired butch lesbian kind of way. Zero effort, awesome results. It’s terrible and Foggy hates her for it; he has to spend way too much effort nowadays looking professional and desperately misses layering his jackets and wearing ugly beanies.

“Malcolm can handle it for a few days,” Jones sniffs dismissively, unaware of Foggy’s rambling internal monologue.

“Ok, probably, but should he _have_ to?”

Jones refuses to engage with Foggy on that. She just plants her tiny ass on his couch and refuses to move, so Foggy decides to just continue his morning and pretend she’s not there. It gets difficult to do that when she steals two of the bacon slices from his breakfast plate, but he soldiers on anyway, and they sit through all three of the Mighty Ducks movies in uncharacteristically companionable silence.

And so passes the next week. Foggy mostly stays at home, only going out to buy milk from the bodega or run his laundry down to the machines in the basement of the apartment building. He doesn’t even have to go grocery shopping because Karen drops by with virtue-filled lasagna and Bess knocks on the door with a veritable army of Hell’s Kitchen grandmas bearing a variety of covered dishes. Jones is a constant black cloud in the corner. Or maybe a particularly twitchy pitbull, Foggy isn’t sure. She calls Trish three times a day at regular intervals, and only leaves when Foggy goes to bed or if Malcolm calls particularly distressed about a case. Otherwise, she plants herself on the couch and pokes away at her laptop.

The thing is, the dedicated guard dog act should be comforting, or touching, coming from someone as misanthropic as Jones is. Mostly, though, it just rubs Foggy’s already frayed emotions raw.

It comes to a head as these things usually do for Foggy – in Matt’s apartment.

Foggy’s forcefully orchestrated some alone time for himself by bribing Malcolm into giving Jones a call. Then, he sneaks out of his apartment and heads to the one spot he knows he can be alone – Matt’s old place. It’s still technically for rent, but no one seems to want it so it’s been vacant since Matt’s lease lapsed. The rooftop access is still unlocked.

Foggy makes his way down the steps, preparing for a few hours of alone time. What he gets instead is a figure standing in the middle of the apartment where Matt’s couch used to be.

_Matt_ , Foggy’s brain pings hopefully for half a millisecond, and then adjusts its expectations to something more realistic – killer ninjas. It’s neither one.

“Holy f— Jones! What are you… How did you…?” Foggy stammers, gripping the stair railing tightly.

She’s standing there calm but intense like a goddess. Like this is a Reckoning of some sort. It probably is. Foggy groans internally, knows better than to let it out into the air.

“The fuck do you think you’re dealing with?” demands Jones flatly. “Malcolm spilled the beans the second I walked in the door.”

Ah. Well. Foggy sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair.

“Look. Jones. Not that I don’t appreciate—”

“Save it. You think I’m an idiot? I know your Bullshit Look by now.” She shifts her hands to her hips, then, and jerks her head to encompass the empty room. “This place? Doesn’t take a PI to figure out who rented it last.”

Foggy stumbles down the rest of the stairs, fueled by indignation. This… Whatever, research, snooping, it’s a breaking of their pact. They don’t talk about the shit that drives them to drink. Foggy doesn’t mention Jones’s ex or that bullshit with the mind control guy or Trish’s mom. He doesn’t mention superheroes or car crashes. In return, Jones doesn’t mention Nelson and Murdock – the Murdock half in particular – or snipers or bombs or ninjas. She absolutely doesn’t mention the Punisher case. It’s just basic decency between two poorly-coping individuals. But Jones’s insane vigilante brain or her PI nosiness or something has led her to step right over the damn line. And Foggy is so done with sitting back and accepting things, because even if she saved his life, even if they’re friends, this is too much.

“I’m warning you, Jones,” he growls, leveling a finger at her. “Let it go. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and I might not have superstrength but I can make you very sorry.”

But she just lifts her chin defiantly, gets that same stubborn look in her eyes that Matt used to – it’s one Foggy’s beginning to think is standard issue for vigilante types.

“I know whatever’s fucking you up has to do with your ex-partner Murdock,” Jones retorts, arms crossed over her chest. “I know he disappeared off the face of the planet. But you don’t get to check out just because he’s gone!”

“ _Check out_?” seethes Foggy because that is—just, rich, coming from her. “Haven’t I done everything that’s been asked of me? I do my damn job because I’m damn good at it, and I don’t get in barfights on a regular basis unlike _some people I know_. What more do you expect from me, Jones?”

“How about _telling people_ when a guy out for your blood gets out of prison, _dickhead_? You didn’t think that shit was relevant? You could have at least told _Hogarth_ , it’s not like her fancy-ass firm doesn’t have enough money to shell out some for fucking bodyguards or something!”

Foggy throws out his arms in frustration.

“I didn’t know!” he shouts. “How the hell should I have! Yeah, Fisk is about fifty kinds of crazy but we’d never even _met_ before! Just because I was one of the lawyers for the guy that flipped on him doesn’t automatically mean I should be a target! _Matt’s_ the one who got him thinking I— Nngh.”

_Idiot_ , he berates himself.

“So it _is_ Murdock’s fault.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Jones. It’s _my_ fault, ok, I’m the one who egged Fisk on—”

Another misstep, judging by the aggressive shift in Jones’s stance. Wonderful.

“You _what_? What the hell were you thinking?!” she snarls, her hands curled into white-knuckled fists at her sides.

“I wasn’t _thinking_ much of anything,” Foggy points out primly. “I was on a lot of drugs.”

“God dammit, Nelson! Are you trying to get yourself killed?!”

With another snarl of frustration, Jones slugs a fist into the wall; it crumples around her blow like soggy cardboard. And even though he doesn’t want to see it, is tired of prying apart the emotional armor of New York’s vigilantes, Foggy can’t ignore the fear and sorrow and guilt warring behind Jones’s eyes. It drains out all his energy and all his frustration and leaves behind only exhaustion and a need to fix what little he reasonably can.

“I don’t want to get myself killed,” he consoles her softly, the only way he knows how. “Jesus, of course I don’t. I’m sorry. I was just being a dick. It’s been… A long week. I need… I need space, Jones.”

“Space!” she demands, low and sharp. “You need a special forces detail is what you need! You could’ve… You could’ve…”

“Died,” he finishes quietly, because leaving it unsaid doesn’t help anyone. “I know. I know, it’s just… I can’t process all of this bullshit with you mother-henning me, Jones. You complain about Trish doing that to you all the time. I need a break from it. I need…” Foggy takes a deep breath, sighs it out. “God, look, I know this is a shitty thing to say, but. I need to be able to deal with my own emotions about this instead of looking after yours. Ok?”

“Fuck you, Nelson,” Jones spits.

“Yeah,” he replies tiredly. “Yeah, I know.”

But instead of continuing the fight, Jones stomps her way up the stairs and slams the door of the roof access behind her. There are no corresponding steps down the apartment building’s hallway, so he can reasonably guess she’s taken up vigil on the roof. With a sigh, Foggy sinks to the floor and manages to fold his legs – _criss-cross-applesauce_ , he thinks idly, and snorts.

The personal space her exit affords him, small as it is, is enough to let Foggy finally breathe. Sleeping pills have been keeping the nightmares away, but Foggy’s ready to dissect his fears in the light of day. To study the problem from every angle.

Fisk, himself, and Matt.

Matt, uncharacteristically, being the only known quantity in that he’s not coming back so Foggy doesn’t really have to make any considerations for his usual bullshit – excepting that no one can find out that Matt is Daredevil, because even if there won’t be consequences for _him_ there’ll be consequences for _Foggy_ and for all of Nelson and Murdock’s former clients.

Foggy is… Dealing. He’s dealing with everything, like he always does. He’s going to get back up and keep trudging, or whatever, because that’s what Nelsons do. And maybe, yeah, definitely, he’s pissed. At Matt at Fisk, at the world itself. Hopefully that anger isn’t going to come back and bite him in the ass, but who knows. There’s already a part of him that’s itching with energy, with a need to do something.

Because Fisk… Fisk is the real variable here. There’s no way in hell that killing Foggy and Matt was all Fisk had planned. The question is, though, did Jones stymie his plans by punching him back behind bars, or is whatever shady thing he’s got going on still in motion? No way to know with just the information Foggy has. But the guy’s got a focus on Hell’s Kitchen and on real estate, and Foggy’s got friends who are good at snooping.

He considers all his moves, and then spends a long time clearing his mind. When all that’s done, Foggy heads up the stairs, makes a note to cordon off some of Trish’s allotted Jessica Jones Repair Fund to fix the hole in the wall, and heads back to his place with his grumpy, dark-haired shadow.

* * *

Life goes on. Nothing suspicious turns up. Jones returns to her work and Foggy returns to his.

When Claire comes to him with the case, Foggy wants nothing to do with it. But Claire’s good people, and though Foggy can’t actually take up and fly to Georgia to run the defense himself, he does what he can. He learns, along the way, that Luke Cage is good people too.

And the dude is literally bulletproof, which takes a huge load off Foggy’s mind in these trying times. At least there’s one person in the world he doesn’t have to worry about finding on a roof having been shot point blank. Well, until he learns about the _armor piercing, exploding bullets_. On the bright side, Luke’s survived like three of them already, which is creepily comforting. But also. For fuck’s sake. Exploding armor-piercing bullets. Seriously. This is the timeline they live in.

Luke, he learns, is Jones’s ex-boyfriend, which is damn awkward. But whatever. He’s got another superfriend in his corner, so that’s got to count for something right? Despite that the whole… _Point_ of getting the hell out of his collapsing law firm was to distance himself from Matt’s superhero bullshit. And to lick his metaphorical wounds. Whatever. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.

On the bright side, his new vigilante friends are about a thousand times less likely to implicate Foggy personally in anything and at least ten times less likely to need a hospital. They’re probably about the same level of snarky asshole that Matt was, though, and even if it kind of stings it’s also kind of comforting. They’re not bff’s or anything, but Foggy’s fond of his new friends. He’s happy to have them.

But he still can’t quite shrug off the itch at the back of his brain, the suspicion that Fisk is up to something more and they all need to be ready.


	5. The Silver Lining At Last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy speaks with Wilson Fisk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the last of Foggy's PoV! After this we'll finally see what Matt's up to.

The thing is, Foggy’s notoriously bad at letting things go. Which is how he finds himself standing outside Riker’s with a sheaf of signed paperwork. Fisk’s lawyer might be a skeevy douche, but he’s also very thorough. Hence the annoyingly verbose list of terms and conditions.

Foggy has no idea if Fisk still runs the prison the way it was rumored he did before. So this is actually a pretty stupid course of action. But Foggy’s done dumber things before. He’s not going to let fear stop him from getting answers, and he’s _definitely_ not going to let Wilson Fisk of all people think he has the advantage here because he doesn’t. _Yes_ , maybe Foggy had about three separate panic attacks over the week he deliberated doing this, but he’s _fine_. Fine. Totally, completely, one hundred percent fine.

He's not fine.

But as long as Fisk doesn’t realize that, everything will be ok.

So Foggy squares his shoulders and enters.

The first several minutes are anticlimactic – security searches, handing over the signed agreement, and waiting for the guards to go collect Fisk even though this meeting has been scheduled for five days. It’s probably supposed to be an intimidation tactic, but Foggy actually appreciates a few more calm moments to consider what he wants to say. He’s played enough waiting games, between his bio mom and the police and the DA’s office. It’s actually pretty routine for him now, and the thought makes him smile.

It’s eight minutes of standing around in a bland white room before he’s led to where their meeting is to be held. Fisk is already inside, sitting with his cuffed hands folded on the metal table, shoulders forward and hunched a bit like a schoolboy in trouble. His expression, though, is quiet and still in a way that reminds Foggy of a predator waiting for its prey to step into range. What a lovely thought that is.

“Mr. Nelson,” Fisk greets quietly.

“Mr. Fisk,” Foggy says, inclining his head slightly as he approaches.

“I admit… I didn’t think we’d be seeing one another again so soon,” replies Fisk. “I’m curious what you have to say that would require… Entering the lion’s den, as it were.”

“See, the thing is. If I get hurt in here, or killed in here,” Foggy says plainly and his fingers don’t even tremble, “it’s not going to matter how much of the prison staff you pay off. It’s going to look suspicious. You’re not going to risk that because whatever you’ve been planning, my guess is that it relies a lot on what you’ve already built – the connections you’ve made in here. Whatever it is, it’s only tangentially related to me and Matt – we were just loose ends you wanted to clean up quick and quiet. And I’m a smart guy, so I feel like that’s a solid hypothesis. But anything happens to me and you’ll have the FBI up your ass faster than you can say ‘hush money’. So.” Foggy plants his hands flat on the table between them and leans forward with a grin. “Let’s chat.”

A slow, close-mouthed smile spreads across Fisk’s face. Something quietly amused.

“Yes. Let’s _chat_ , Mr. Nelson. What is it you want to speak with me about?”

Foggy settles in his own chair, takes a few seconds to collect himself. Then he pulls a folded set of papers out of his suit coat and spreads them on the table.

“I’ve had a couple people take a look at what happened to all your assets after your first arrest. It’s pretty interesting. A lot of them were seized. Pretty much all of them in fact,” he explains, studying the numbers so he doesn’t have to look at Fisk. “But, as a soulless dickbag lawyer myself, I can tell you that a rich guy’s attorney does not stick around when the money dries up. So. The fact that yours is still with you is suspicious.”

When Foggy chances a look back up, Fisk shrugs, unconcerned.

“He’s a good man,” he explains. “Loyal.”

That actually makes Foggy snort.

“I mean, maybe,” he relents. “If we lived in Sunshine Unicorn Land. But we live in New York. Anyway, it’s not really the lawyer I’m concerned with. No, I want to know what’s so interesting down on 44th and 11th. Place called Midland Circle.”

Fisk ponders that for a second, tilting his head.

“I can assure you, my name is not attached to that building in any way,” he says, slow and earnest.

Foggy shakes his head.

“No. No, but it _was_. And whoever you sold it to finished building there. Plus, the shell company that owns that warehouse you dragged me to – yours, I’m guessing, since it’s only courteous to use your own creepy warehouses for murderous purposes – has been buying up whatever it can in the area. It actually made an offer to lease a few floors of Midland Circle itself, but got rejected. So I’ll ask again. What’s so special about that block?”

There’s a clatter of chains as Fisk shifts, laces his fingers together differently. Foggy’s used to silence as a tactic – knows it intimately, from Rosalind, from Matt, from himself. So he waits Fisk out, watches him piece together what he wants to put words to. It’s odd, Foggy thinks distantly, that Fisk isn’t so frightening like this. Thoughtful, subdued.

But Foggy knows that can change in an instant. Fisk’s rage isn’t like Matt’s, isn’t a constant bubbling under the surface that you can track in clenched fists and tight posture. Fisk flips like a switch, from calm to violent. A berserker rage.

“I’m… Intrigued by you, Mr. Nelson,” Fisk says at last. “As I said, you remind me of myself. So I’ll offer you a bit of advice. What’s happening in Midland Circle, while I can assure you it has nothing to do with me, is beyond your pay grade. Involving yourself in that is a sure way to shorten your life.”

There’s probably a thinly veiled ‘I want to kill you myself’ in there, but Foggy chooses valiantly to ignore it.

“You really expect me to believe that whatever you’re planning has nothing to do with Midland Circle?”

“What is it that makes you to think I’m planning anything, young man?”

_Because you so obviously are_ probably isn’t the most mature response, and it’s not likely to get Foggy much of anything. So even though he hates it he knows what comes next.

“Because you said we’re alike,” Foggy tells Fisk. “Even knocked down, if I was you I wouldn’t be sitting on my ass. I’d keep going. I’m stubborn like that. Also it would just be a massive waste if you got out of jail and your only plan was to murder a couple of poor, no-name lawyers. Seriously.”

“Yes, I… I suppose it would.” Fisk pauses, shakes his head, attempts something of a smile that doesn’t really suit his face. “This has been… Refreshing. Compared to your partner’s visit with me.”

“Yeah, well, you know me,” Foggy replies blithely. “I always aim for ‘refreshing’ in interactions with my attempted murderers. Just chasing those positive Yelp reviews.”

Fisk doesn’t laugh, which is expected but honestly Foggy thinks he deserves a laugh from _someone_ for keeping his top-notch humor intact while talking to the man who tried to kill him.

“What I mean,” says Fisk, “is that he crossed a line. He brought someone into our discussion that he shouldn’t have.”

“He threatened your girlfriend,” Foggy deduces. “Heard she’s out of the country right now.”

“Fiancée, actually,” corrects Fisk, primly resettling his chained hands.

“Huh,” Foggy considers. “Congratulations. I guess my point is Matt’s always gone for people’s hot buttons. He’s an asshole like that. But shitty people fall in love too, I mean that’s just how the world spins. I’m not here to threaten your fiancée, Mr. Fisk. But I am here to tell you that you’re the dick that made this personal. Ok? This wasn’t about me and you before, but it is now. You want Matt? Too bad. He’s not here. He’s not coming back. But I am _right_ the fuck here, and I’m not going _anywhere_. So. You or your people touch me or my people again and I’ll make you _wish_ It was Matt in here threatening your fiancée’s visa status.”

“Hm.” He doesn’t really give an indication that he’s cowed by this threat, but the look in his eyes isn’t amused. “I see. But you know, I have a few observations, a few… Questions of my own, Mr. Nelson.”

“Yeah…?”

It only makes sense, in hindsight, that Fisk has something he wants to say. Why else would he accept the meeting with Foggy, besides idle curiosity? And no matter what Fisk says, Foggy’s very sure the man isn’t one who feeds his idle curiosities. Fisk’s eyes narrow sharply.

“I think it’s… _Interesting_ , that there haven’t been any sightings of Daredevil lately. Don’t you? It seems as though perhaps he and your… Associate, went missing around the same time.”

Of all the things Foggy’s expecting, that isn’t one of them. He flinches.

“You really think so?” he replies, but there’s a noticeable waver in his voice that’s threatening to splinter into hysteria.

“Yes. I do. And I think you’ve realized it too. You see, I don’t forget a punch, Mr. Nelson, and I don’t believe in coincidence. There’s a _reason_ Matthew Murdock hits like Daredevil, and it’s _not_ because his father was a boxer,” Fisk says darkly.

Foggy can’t help himself, then. He pushes up and stands, can’t bear to be sitting, can’t bear to be in range of Fisk’s threats.

“That’s quite the conspiracy theory,” Foggy manages at last, his mocking smile coming out a bit manic. “I’m picturing a wall collage with a lot of pushpins and red yarn.”

“I think we’re done here,” retorts Fisk, leaning back casually in his chair.

“You know what, we really, really are.”

Foggy tries to tell himself what he does isn’t fleeing, but – yeah, he’s running the fuck away. For the very first time, he’s actually glad Matt flew the coop when he did.

At best, Fisk strongly suspects Matt is Daredevil. At worst, he _knows_. And the fact that he hasn’t said anything about it to the cops or the press yet isn’t to do with being an honorable adversary, no way. He’s saving the information for when it can be the most useful, do the most hurt.

As long as Matt stays gone, there’s no reason to use that information. There’s no way to get proof and no Daredevil to arrest.

So maybe it takes several months and a horrifying near death experience, but hey, Foggy’s found his silver lining at last.

Fuck.


	6. Course Correction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt finds out what happened to Foggy and heads for home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Matt was being... Extremely uncooperative in this chapter. But he'll get his soon enough. Do you hear me, Matthew?? Consequences are coming!
> 
> Anyway, I tried to strike a balance where I portrayed how Extremely Unhealthy I find Matt/Elektra while also not committing unfair character assassination, so. We'll see what you all think of it.

It begins the night they leave, a slight pinch as their plane lifts off the ground. Matt shrugs it off, then, decides it must be airsickness – he’s never flown before, except across rooftops under his own power.

But the unsettled feeling builds and builds as the days go on, an itch under his skin, a guilty prickle beneath the burn of the devil. He sloughs it off – on purpose, on accident – with the fighting. The running. Everything is as wild and hazy and destructive as it was when he and Elektra first met. They sleep in a different bed each night, always on silk sheets. They always eat the best food, always fight the best fights, and her kiss is as scorching as it’s always been.

He’s so lost in her that nothing ever really hurts, nothing ever reaches him anymore. He doesn’t hear screaming or crying anymore. Sleeps soundly, unbothered – hears, feels, smells, tastes only Elektra.

It takes months for him to even consider that she might be steering him away from thoughts of Hell’s Kitchen, of the people he’s left behind. He brings it up then, tentatively, and the way she shuts him down is familiar, reminds him of college, of the way she’d laughed at his ambitions.

But Matt is stubborn, and once he gets his teeth in something he doesn’t let go. So he drops the argument, but the next time he knows she’ll be gone for a few hours, he steals her tablet and turns on its accessibility features.

Just the once, Matt tells himself as he chooses the website for The Bulletin. Just to make the nagging doubts go away, to prove that he’s chosen correctly and they’re all doing just fine without him. Just to have evidence for himself that he can sink back into life with Elektra like a warm bath and there are no consequences to anything.

F-R-A-N-K-L-I-N, he types. Then N-E-L-S-O-N. Enter.

The first search result is an article dated ten weeks ago. Matt taps it open, doesn’t wait for the screen reader to give him the title. It’s Foggy, so it must be good. A prestigious case won, perhaps? It wouldn’t surprise—

“Local Attorney Hospitalized Upon Release of Infamous Kingpin,” the screen reader tells him placidly.

Matt can feel the blood drain from his face, feel it snake downwards and turn his stomach sour. Snatching up the tablet, he rushes for the suite’s bathroom. By the third paragraph, Matt is curled over the toilet, retching. He still has one earbud in, though the other fell out in his haste to reach the bathroom, and he strains to hear the words of the article over his own body’s visceral rejection of them.

The guilt is a physical presence, bearing down on him like a tidal wave. He wasn’t there to protect Foggy. No, even… More than that, he’d never even _told_ Foggy about Fisk’s threats because he’d just assumed he would be there to protect him, to stop Fisk again, to redirect that rage onto himself. And then Matt had left with Elektra and never even considered…

Foggy could have died. He could have _died_ and it would have been all Matt’s fault and Matt would have _never known_.

His esophagus burns unbearably and he heaves into the toilet again, but the only thing coming up anymore is an unholy, slimy amalgam of snot and stomach acid.

* * *

When she returns from her errand, Elektra finds him still curled up on the tile floor, arms pressed tightly to his belly. Matt hardly realizes she’s there, his mind too busy swirling on a sea of what-ifs. She crouches, presses a cool hand to his forehead.

“Did lunch not sit well with you, Matthew?” she asks, as gently as she can.

But he can’t speak. Can’t tell her. Just flails his arm until he can grab the tablet and shove it into her hands. She fumbles with the controls a bit, and when she sees the article for herself, her heart begins to race. There’s something odd about the cadence that Matt is too dazed and rattled to pick up on. Some familiar nuance… Elektra breathes deeply and steadily, though, and her voice remains calm.

“I see. That’s rather unfortunate for him, isn’t it. But it looks as though everything ended up as well as could be. Come now, Matthew, let’s get you into bed. You really will make yourself sick lying on the floor like that.”

She heaves him onto his feet and Matt walks as best he can back to the bed. He knows the silk is smooth and high quality, but it feels like sandpaper against his skin and he can’t get comfortable no matter how hard he tries. Every sound, smell, feeling is grating to his senses, suddenly. Even Elektra is too much, and not in the good way that filters the guilt from his soul like a sieve.

“I can’t,” Matt stammers, doesn’t know what he means to say as he grits his teeth and presses his hands to his ears. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”

And then one of Elektra’s hands is gripping the side of his neck.

“ _Matthew_!” she says sharply, and the universe stills; narrows down to her alone. “Sleep.”

Something in him, instinctive, tries to fight the way he always does. But it’s overwhelmed by the exhaustion, both physical and emotional, and the way Elektra’s touch anchors him.

Matt drifts off.

* * *

Though he’s still groggy when he wakes, the world has settled back into place around him. Matt sits up slowly in the bed.

“Feeling a little better?” Elektra asks, handing him a cold glass of water.

Matt, parched, his mouth and throat fuzzy with bacteria and stinging with acid, downs it in three long swallows.

“A little,” he rasps.

“We’ll give it a night,” she decides in return, not an offer but a decision. “Change hotels tomorrow instead. No point in making traveling any more miserable for everyone.”

He’s actually a little surprised she’s dodging the subject – his breakdown is something she’d normally needle him over, in a well-meaning but untactful way. But she seems just as unwilling to discuss it as he is.

It comes to him, then. What was off about her heartbeat before. Guilt. It’s distinct in  Elektra, because she feels it so seldomly – she’s a woman who’s good at rationalizing her actions, about doing what she feels needs to be done. It’s something he both hates and admires about her in turns. But guilt would imply…

“Did you know about all this before?” asks Matt, setting the empty glass on the bedside table with a discordant clack. “About the article?”

“Honestly, Matthew, what reason would I have to go looking through some B-grade newspaper for a city halfway around the world?”

Her words and her tone are a little incredulous, a little mocking. But Matt can see through that, knows her well enough to realize that though she’s essentially calling the question stupid she hasn’t actually refuted it. Matt slips from the bed and stands.

“Elektra,” he says sharply, batting aside her misdirection, “did you _know_?”

A sigh, an irritated ‘tsk’, and the soft rustle of clothing that means she’s shrugging her shoulders.

“Yes, fine, I knew.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” demands Matt, trying hard to cover the hurt in his tone with something more accusatory.

“Because I knew you would leave me!” Elektra snaps. “I knew at the first sign of trouble for your nagging little friend you’d go running back there out of some misplaced sense of guilt. You promised me, Matthew! Together! You don’t really want to be around him, I know you don’t. That’s how we met all those years ago, with you trying to get away from him, from the coddling. To get away from the restrictions, the act you had to put on! That tiny little life you never really wanted! You can be yourself with me, that’s why you made this decision! Don’t throw it all away just because you’re upset!”

Matt shakes his head, flexing his fists. He’s so choked up by anger and guilt that he can’t even speak. A memory wells up in the back of his head, Foggy’s voice so hard that recalling it makes Matt’s teeth ache – _From now on, I will count on you for nothing at all!_

But even Foggy’s rage is better than nothing. Better than not being able to pinpoint that heartbeat. Its absence in his ear is suddenly damning, deafening, unbearable.

“I’m going back,” he grits out.

“ _Matthew_.”

“Do you think you can stop me, Elektra?” Matt asks her with a devil’s smile, his blood thrumming for a fight. “You can’t.”

But for once, she doesn’t take the bait. Doesn’t throw the first punch. Just settles in, firm and rigid and disapproving.

“All I ever wanted was to be free,” Elektra says, cupping Matt’s face in her hands. “I _know_ you want that for yourself too. And you can _have_ it, if you just let yourself. If you just _let go_ of everything that’s tying you down. You don’t have to let it hurt you, Matthew. The guilt, the responsibility – it’s not _real_. You don’t need to feel it just because you think you should.”

And there it is, Matt realizes. The inescapable divide that’s always been between them.

He loves Elektra. He does. _God_ , he loves Elektra. But this… He’s made the wrong choice.

Because it was easy, because it felt good, because everything else had seemed to break apart and wither the moment she showed up again. This, all of it, it feels good but it isn’t what Matt needs. The fire and the violence and the distance from consequences – it’s killing him, it’s like a drug. It _feels_ good, but it isn’t good. He’s losing parts of himself, he realizes. Parts he believed in, once. Parts of himself he’d been proud of, a life that had been important to him. People that had been important to him.

Foggy. Foggy, who cries when they fight, who became Matt's first real friend like it was as natural as breathing, who puts up a practical front but has one of the kindest hearts Matt has ever known. Foggy, who seems to know everyone in New York, who has a mind like a steel trap, who always believed in Matt even when he never should have. The one person in the world who, even if he didn't always understand the worst parts of Matt, brought out the best ones without fail.

Matt’s where he chose to be, but he’s not home.

“It’s…” Matt tugs at his hair in agitation, sorts through his thoughts. “It isn’t about want, Elektra, it’s. Sometimes you—sometimes what you want doesn’t matter because it conflicts with what you _need_. And I need… I need to know that he’s ok.”

“You already know he’s ok,” soothes Elektra. “He was rescued, his attacker is behind bars again. There is no need to go back.”

She strokes his cheeks with her thumbs, and every breath he takes draws the scent of her deeper. But he pulls away, reaches up and clasps her wrists, draws her hands away from his face.

“I have to, Elektra.”

The sharp breath Elektra draws in tells Matt she still doesn’t understand. And maybe she never will, but he has to, he needs to—

“Matthew—”

“Do you remember,” Matt asks her, his voice choked with tears he didn’t even know he’d started to shed, “what you told me when we were young? Your dad wanted you to get married. And you cared about him, so you almost went through with it for his sake, but you didn’t. Do you remember you told me why?”

She slips out of his grip with ease. Then her elegant fingers slide through his hair and trace down his wet cheek again.

“I said I would have regretted it for the rest of my life,” she answers softly. “Oh, Matthew…”

“If I don’t go to him now, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life,” Matt tells Elektra fervently.

“I won’t wait for you.”

As it always does when she says the things that hurt, her heart beats truth. Matt nods, chokes out his answer.

“I know.”

* * *

She books him a plane route back to New York that very night. There’s two scheduled layovers, first in France, then in London.

They part at the gate. Elektra presses a hot kiss to Matt’s mouth, settles one of her silk scarves around his neck, and then vanishes into the exhausted, stale-smelling crowd. Matt shivers, feels another pinch of guilt, of loss, and draws the corner of her scarf to his nose. It smells like her. Maybe it’s a reminder of what he’s giving up, a last parting shot in the fight that’s always existed between them. But Matt doesn’t think so. It’s… He hopes… More than anything, Matt hopes it’s meant as a security blanket, a memory, a token.

He steps onto the plane still breathing it in.

* * *

Matt has to actually _look up_ Foggy’s address. His old place is being rented by a kid from California who came to the city to make it big on Broadway. By the waft of scents Matt gets when the door opens, it’s been months since Foggy lived there.

“Sorry,” Matt stammers. “I’m. I was looking for Foggy Nelson?”

“Uh. No, sorry, man, just me here. Maybe you’re thinking of the dude who lived here before me?”

And then Matt has to spend ten minutes extricating himself from polite chatter about the guy’s entire life story. _Californians_.

So. It takes another several hours to finally make it to Foggy’s door.

His knocking is frantic, on its way to downright annoying, but Matt can’t help himself. Foggy is so close, so close. His heartbeat fills Matt’s head like a song, the smell of him is like really, truly coming home.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Foggy calls, and the sound of his voice makes Matt’s heart skip a beat.

The moment the door’s open, the moment there’s no longer a barrier between them, Matt tugs Foggy close. Holds him tight, breathes him in, and thinks, _I’m never letting go again_.


	7. Not As Sweet As You Remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt's homecoming is more bitter than sweet. He also gets yelled at by an alcoholic PI.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok folks, well... Aside from a couple isolated scenes, this is really... All I have, at the moment. I'm not sure how to fix things between the boys besides just smooshing them together until everything works out, and although I know some of the big plot points I've only just watched the first episode of the Defenders so I'm not sure how faithfully I'm going to be able to incorporate its plot into this fic. If I did try that, it might take a little longer since I'd need to actually take time to watch the episodes and figure out what needs to change. So. Any preferences or suggestions would be helpful!

“What… What the _hell_? _Matt_?”

“It—it’s me,” Matt babbles, relieved and whole with his hands running up and down Foggy’s sides. “I’m here. I’m here. It’s me.”

There’s something slightly hysterical, laughter maybe, forcing its way up his throat but he swallows it back down.

“What are you _doing_ here?” demands Foggy, and it’s not curiosity or wonder or shock in his voice – it’s anger.

He probably should have expected that, but it still stings.

“I needed to, I heard about, I had to be sure you were alright,” Matt stammers in reply. “Foggy—”

“Let go of me!”

And Matt knows he should. He really, really should. Foggy is not kidding and while he’s not liable to actually throw a punch he might rear back for a slap soon. His heartbeat is not joking around. But. Matt can’t make himself stop touching because here, finally, after two days of anxiety-filled travel, is Foggy under his hands. Solid and real and alive.

In the end, he doesn’t really get a choice. Foggy struggles out of Matt’s hold, shoves him back—

And then, before Matt can get close again, slams the door in his face with a deafening bang. The barrier is back. The way it muffles Foggy’s heartbeat is familiar but that doesn’t make much of a dent in the panic squeezing Matt’s lungs. He presses his hands flat to the door, feels the grain of wood against his fingers when all he wants to feel is fabric and skin.

“Foggy, please—”

“Go away, Matt. Just. I can’t do this again. It’s a dream,” Foggy says firmly. “A very stupid dream, and I’m going to wake up now.”

“It’s not.” Matt presses his forehead to the door, can sense Foggy’s body heat close on the other side. “It’s not a dream. I’m here. Please, let me in, I’m here.”

There’s a slight scrape of skin on skin – Foggy pinching himself – and then a defeated whuff of air.

“Fuck,” Foggy breathes, low enough that no one but Matt would ever be able to hear it through the door. “ _Fuck_.”

Foggy’s heartbeat is as panic-quick as Matt’s is, and Matt hates it.

“We can—we can talk about this,” he pleads, knowing it sounds trite and stupid.

“What the hell do you think there is to talk about? You can’t just swan off without a word and then come back when it’s convenient for you! The rest of us might not be—hot super-ninjas, or whatever, but the lives of us common boring assholes don’t just press pause because you’re not here, Matt! No one asked you to come back!”

“Five minutes,” Matt begs. “Just give me five minutes.”

On the other side of the door, there’s a wet slide as Foggy scrubs his hands against his face, and the scent of tears is strong enough that the air seems choked with it. Matt’s surprised he’s not crying himself.

“You’re a dick,” Foggy says after three shuddering breaths in and out.

But he fumbles with the door anyway, opens it again with a metallic click that’s music to Matt’s ears. Foggy’s movements, his breathing, what Matt can make out of his posture, all screams defeat. That cuts more than the anger did, but not enough that Matt doesn’t take what he’s been offered – he doesn’t even hesitate to step over the threshold when Foggy moves aside for him. It’s—selfish, probably. But Matt’s done worse things, and… And he needs this.

The door closes again – a click and not a slam – and it insulates them from the outside world. Foggy sighs.

“Five minutes,” he reminds Matt. “Although I don’t know what you could possibly have to say.”

“Foggy…”

“You chose her. It was kind of an either-or deal, Matt. You don’t have to feel…” Foggy pauses, heart rate ticking up; reconsidering, rephrasing a lie into truth. “Hell’s Kitchen isn’t your responsibility anymore. And neither am I.”

His tone and his heart both ring truth, but it’s. It’s not. It’s not true. There’s a difference between belief and fact; Matt’s learned that the hard way. Foggy’s wrong, about this. This was Matt’s responsibility, and it still is.

“That doesn’t— You have to know I would have come if I’d known—”

There’s a soft swish, hand carding through hair – it’s shorter, Matt realizes painfully, Foggy’s cut his hair – and a subtle burst of Foggy’s shampoo fills the air.

“No, Matt,” he says sharply. “I don’t _have to_ know that. Even when you were still _here_ you weren’t here. I was shot in the shoulder and you never came to visit me. Not once. And then you were _gone_ , and I got kidnapped by Fisk and I really…” Foggy swallows, trembles, and Matt can feel it in the air, through the vibration of the floorboards, all around him like a crushing wave. “I thought I was gonna die. That I was gonna die having to listen to him insist that you would never leave me behind, that you _loved_ me too much not to come try and save me. I thought that was how I would die and you’d never even know. Or worse, you just wouldn’t care.”

Matt folds in on himself like a house of cards. _Oh_ , he thinks bleakly as his eyes sting and tears begin to run down his cheeks, _there they are_. He chokes on the rasp of a sob and forces words from his mouth instead.

“Don’t say that,” he pleads. “Don’t say that. I don’t… I always cared, Foggy. Always, I never stopped.”

“I wish… I wish I could believe that. I really do. But… You were my best friend. We were a team, Matt. What you did – skipping out on work, lying, vanishing into the night to never return? You don’t do that to your team.”

“I…” Matt bites his lip, gathers himself. “I know. I made a mistake—a lot of mistakes. And I’m sorry. But I’m here now, Foggy, and I want to make things right.”

The floor creaks quietly as Foggy takes a step backwards. His hair barely swishes as he shakes his head, it’s so short now.

“You should go, Matt. You need to go.”

“I can’t just—”

“Fisk knows you’re Daredevil!”

The whole world grinds to a sudden and sickening stop. Fisk knows? He _knows_? But, if he knows, then— But how would—

“Wait, how… How do you know that?” Matt demands, even though he suspects he doesn’t want to know the answer.

There’s an irritated huff, the one that usually means Foggy is rolling his eyes. He doesn’t narrate the action, though, and Matt’s heart sinks further into his stomach.

“He pretty much told me so himself when I went to interrogate him a few days ago.”

The cold fear that washes through Matt’s veins at those words hits with all the force of a bucket of ice.

“You went in there? _Alone_? Foggy, you can’t—He owns that prison! How could you do something so reckless and—”

“Well, how could _you_?” comes the retort. “Apparently you’re the idiot who decked him in the face with your extremely memorable fists during your visit, which is how he figured it out in the first place!”

The newspapers had called Daredevil the man without fear, but it was always a lie. Matt is driven by his fear as much as his anger – they’re instinctive. They’re what led him to hit Fisk back, that day in the prison. Another mistake.

“It doesn’t matter,” Matt says, a lie that rings like truth. “It doesn’t—I’ll figure it out, Foggy, I’ll fix it. Whatever it takes. But right now, I… Right now, fixing things with you is more important.”

“I don’t know if you can fix this, Matt.”

“I will. Anything—I’ll do whatever it takes. This is important. _You’re_ important to me, Foggy—”

Foggy puts up a hand, palm out – a silencing gesture. Again, he doesn’t narrate, but this time it feels more like he can’t summon the energy rather than that he’s keeping silent out of anger.

“Please, just… Just leave,” Foggy says weakly.

And this time, Matt does.

* * *

He wanders for a while, but in the end he finds himself at the office of Alias Investigations. He knocks lightly on the door, and it opens.

“The hell do you want?” a woman asks, irritated.

“Jessica Jones?” replies Matt, folding his hands over his cane.

“Who’s asking?” she grunts.

There’s a swish as she slugs a drink from the half-empty bottle in her hand.

“My name is Matt Murdock,” he says. “I’m a friend of Foggy Nelson.”

There’s an ugly noise – the glass of the bottle beginning to crack. She sets it down on her desk, hard, and it shatters. Even though he can’t see her expression, the tension radiating off her is heavy, vibrating, unmistakable. Her heart is racing like a snare drum. Combined with the overpowering smell of whiskey, it’s almost enough to make Matt nauseous.

“Thank you,” he says anyway, because she’s due that. “For looking after him.”

“No,” says Jessica Jones with hatred clenched between her teeth.

And for all his methods of perception, Matt doesn’t know what that means. He cocks his head to the side on instinct as if that will make her meaning clearer.

“Sorry?”

“I said no, asshole,” Jones growls. “You don’t get to—to come in here and thank me like I pet-sat your dog, alright. Fuck you! I didn’t do a damn thing for you. Nelson might be a meddling idiot but he’s worth at least that much on his own.”

“No, I…” Matt fidgets with his cane, turns his head away although it has no effect on his perception of her. “I know that, but he’s my—he’s important to me.”

The inelegant snort Jones makes in response tells him all he needs to know about her opinion of him. She’s right to have it, too, Matt supposes. It was his job to protect Foggy. He was the only one who’d known about Fisk’s threats towards him. But no matter his mistakes or what she thinks of him or even what Foggy thinks of him, Matt knows he’s telling the truth. Foggy is so, so important. Important to Matt.

When Foggy had started walking away again, after the Castle case, Matt had tried desperately to tug him back. And it had only made it angrier, so Matt shoved him away. Both were mistakes. He can live without Foggy in his world if he has to, but Matt cannot live in a world without Foggy. And Foggy isn’t safe even with Matt gone, so really the only answer is to see to his protection personally.

He smiles; it’s fake, but he does it anyway.

“Have a nice day, Miss Jones,” Matt tells her as he leaves

“Go to hell,” she calls after him.


	8. On The Record

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt starts settling back into Hell's Kitchen, and goes to have a talk with Karen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is! In Fact! A plot now!!! Ahhhh!! So you'll see some changes in the story tags soon! It may still be a little bit before the plot hits, though, lots of guilt and feelings to slog through.
> 
> My original plan for this story was to have all the rest of the chapters following Matt's pov but since things are getting Defenders-y, that's not gonna fly. We'll play it by ear. For now, this particular chapter is still following Matt and the next one probably will too.

His old apartment is empty – and even cheaper than before because apparently no one wanted to rent it in the months he was gone. Additionally, Matt finds, Elektra stashed a tidy sum of money in his bank account sometime in the last couple of days. He’s… Not actually sure what he would have done if she hadn’t. Unlike his apartment, the former law offices of Nelson and Murdock are gone – leased to a tax prep startup – so he’s technically out of a job.

Not to mention that he has, he realizes, no furniture or worldly possessions besides the clothes on his back, the cane in his hand, Elektra’s silk scarf, and the Daredevil armor. Which is…

Stick would scoff at him for feeling upset about it, but… Just as there are people and intangible things Matt had left behind to follow Elektra that are more precious to him than he’d treated them… There are physical objects that he misses the same way.

And Matt’s a bullheaded sort of person, he knows that about himself. Knows he’ll track down everything he can’t live without, get all of it back. But for a moment… The small, young, lonely part of himself that Matt keeps tucked away beneath knowledge and experience and a thick skin breaks down and mourns.

_Dad’s things_ , that part of him accuses in an echo of his own nine-year-old voice. _The first Braille book he ever bought you. The sunglasses Foggy gave you at graduation. The crochet Christmas ornament Sister Josephine made for you at the orphanage_.

Matt presses he heels of his palms against his eyes and takes a shuddering breath.

“Later,” he says aloud, just to hear it in the air. “I’ll get it all back. Later.”

In the meantime… His apartment might be his own again, but it has no furniture. Matt checks himself into a hotel.

* * *

The upside of not having a job at the moment is that it gives him time to contemplate his precarious situation. Fisk already knows that Daredevil is Matt Murdock, but that doesn’t mean Matt doesn’t have to be careful about his secret identity.

He camps out in his hotel room during the day and relearns the city at night. On his patrols he circles again and again around the block containing Foggy’s apartment. Close enough to listen, but not close enough to give in to the temptation to knock on Foggy’s window like a stray cat begging to be let in from the rain. Matt hears a lot of nightmares, and each one flays him open. He wants to soothe them away, wants to promise Foggy that he'll never be hurt again, he wants... But Matt knows that his comfort wouldn't be appreciated or accepted. Still, he listens. Keeps listening. Keeps close.

He lets the papers announce Daredevil is back before Matt Murdock makes his ‘return’ and he shows up at Karen’s apartment. Like Foggy’s, it’s a new one. Which only makes sense, of course, considering how often her byline appears in the paper. She’s doing well for herself, it seems, and Matt’s happy for her.

He knocks, three precise raps on the door, and when Karen opens it she gasps.

“Matt.”

He tries on a smile.

“Hello, Karen.”

Though her heart is beating double-time in her chest, Karen opens the door wider and ushers Matt into her apartment. It smells like paper, like ink and graphite and eraser shavings. And of course it smells like the woman who lives in it. Karen wears the same perfume, still. The tap of his cane on the floor and a whiff of plastic in the air tells Matt that there’s a pot of fake flowers sitting on the windowsill. Karen moves to them, adjusts them momentarily, and then seems to change her mind and sets the flowerpot on the kitchen table instead.

“Trying out Feng shui?” Matt asks lightly, a joke.

Karen’s heart trips, flutters – a familiar pattern. A lie.

“Something like that,” she agrees.

Matt doesn’t call her on it because what good would it do? He’s not her boyfriend, not anymore, and he’s not her protector – or she doesn’t want him to be. If she wants to lie about something inconsequential, he has no right to the truth. Still, it’s… Uncomfortable. Karen is clearly on edge, and while there’s something she wants to say, Matt knows that getting her to say it is a different game from getting Foggy to speak his mind. So Matt tries a different tactic.

“I… I read your article,” he says carefully.

“I hoped you would,” replies Karen.

She doesn't ask which one. They both know well enough. Her tone isn’t cold or warm, it’s… Unsure. Awkward. A culmination of what’s passed between them but is no longer there.

“Just… I just arrived in town today, so… I thought I would pay you a visit.”

There’s a quiet scoff. Karen rubs the petals of the fake flowers between her fingers and it produces a near-silent rasping noise.

“I kind of expected you were already here,” she says, sounding thoroughly unimpressed. “Since Daredevil’s been patrolling the rooftops again for almost a week.”

Matt swallows hard.

“What, uh, what does that have to do with—”

Karen cuts him off with an irritated sigh.

“Foggy told me,” she explains. “It wasn’t fair to him, having to carry all that by himself.”

“Ah.”

It’s all he can think to say. There’s a small part of him that’s angry – He had promised, Foggy had promised not to tell anyone, and yet— But Matt knows that the world at large has no idea who Daredevil is, so it’s not as though Foggy’s been shouting Matt’s identity from the rooftops. It’s still jarring, upsetting, though. First Fisk found out, then Karen. _Is there anyone else?_  Matt wonders with a chill. _Anyone else who knows?_

“I wish…” There’s a soft swish as Karen shakes her head and her long hair flutters around her shoulders. “I wish I would have heard it from you.”

Under the weight of more guilt, Matt’s shoulders begin to sag.

“I wish that too,” he tells her honestly.

“And yet you didn’t tell me. But it’s…” Karen sighs. “We really needed you here, Matt. Foggy needed you. And I’m sure whatever you were doing was necessary or felt necessary or… But you didn’t even say goodbye.”

Matt can only offer a wry twist of his lips.

“Didn’t realize anyone wanted me to.”

“That—that’s not fair,” Karen argues. “We were worried out of our minds! Foggy spent almost two weeks looking for you all over the city before I found out from Frank that you left.”

“Frank,” Matt repeats, disbelieving. “Frank _Castle_?”

Karen scoffs.

“Who else did you expect me to ask, Matt, the dead ninjas? He was the only other person there that night, the only one with the vantage to see where you and Elektra went.”

That doesn’t mean Karen should put herself anywhere near a man as dangerous as Frank Castle, though, and Matt opens his mouth to tell her so when he hears her inhale sharply, angrily. Her heart is beating a stressed tempo in her chest. Matt closes his mouth again. He… Doesn’t have the right, he reminds himself.

But he still worries. Still wants to protect her, even if that’s not what she wants from him. Because part of Matt still loves Karen Page. But it’s not a worthwhile excuse, and she isn’t a victim who needs looking after, and she’s made that clear.

He had thought of Karen as good and sweet – and she is, she is, but she’s so much more than that. He can understand it now, in hindsight, the pieces he overlooked or discounted before. Her purse is on the table next to the flowerpot, and there’s a loaded gun inside it. Her posture is rigid and strong. She grabbed the Punisher case between her teeth and refused to let it go. She tracks down the truth and doesn’t let anything get in her way, no matter the potential consequences. She’s steely and relentless and reckless, with a darkness to her that Matt hadn’t seen, or hadn’t wanted to see. He’d idealized her, imagined her only as the soft parts of herself that she showed him to be kind. But Karen Page is a person with hidden depths and sharp edges. Much like Matt himself, he realizes, and maybe that’s it. The both of them, looking for something good and simple and beautiful, had latched on to assumptions they’d made about one another.

But that isn’t what Matt wants, going forward. He wants to know Karen and… And as much as being known is a terrifying thing, he wants her to know him too.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I know you are, Matt. I… I know.” With a soft, gusting sigh, Karen presses her palms to the table, wide apart, and hangs her head so that the long strands of her hair trail across its wooden surface. “But is this it?”

“Is… Is what it?”

“Did you make a decision?” Karen prods, though her words are still directed down at the table instead of up at Matt. “Are you staying? Here? Are you home for good? Or is this just…” She swallows, pauses, but Matt can tell Karen isn’t finished so he waits. “You’ll break his heart if this is just a social call, Matt. If you’re only back to check on the aftermath of my article. Foggy—”

And Matt burns. With guilt, with anger. He doesn’t want to hear from anyone else, not even Karen, about Foggy and himself. That’s— It’s between them. It’s private and intimate and. And he doesn’t want to hear Foggy’s heart breaking through the words of someone else’s mouth.

“I’m staying,” he insists roughly. “I’m. I’m home for good, Karen. I won’t leave again.”

Another sigh from Karen, but this one is less shaky. It might almost be relieved. She lifts her head, angles her face towards his.

“Good, that’s… That’s really good, Matt.” Karen swallows. “It’s not enough, though. It’s a start. You know that, right?”

“I made a mistake, Karen. But I’m going to fix it. I’m going to fix all of it,” promises Matt. “You deserved better, and… Foggy deserved better too. But I can’t let—I can’t let him, I can’t let anyone I care about get hurt again. I’m so… I’m tired of burying the people I love. It hurts, and I can’t… I can’t…”

And like he did, so long ago when they were fighting a losing battle against Fisk, Matt breaks apart. Things are different now. But Karen still steps toward him, presses his face into her shoulder and strokes slender fingers through the hair at the nape of Matt’s neck. Even now, she’s kind enough to give him this much.

“There are so many people who care about you, Matt,” Karen sighs. “And you left us all. I won’t lie, I’m sure Foggy isn’t going to take this well, but… Someone told me once that the people that can really hurt you are the ones close enough to do it. He’s hurting, and he’ll be angry, upset because—because he does still care. And I’m not saying this for you, I’m saying it because Foggy deserves to be happy again. And I think he… He can be, if you fix things with him. If he gets his best friend back. Right now he’s… He tries. He jokes around and— But his heart isn’t in it. And I was… You hurt me too, Matt, a hell of a lot, but he’s known you ten years longer than I have. There’s more there to fix.”

“I know.”

Karen pulls away, takes a deep breath. Matt tries hard to swallow past the lump in his throat.

“Then fix it, Matt. God, just— _Please_. Fix it. Because I can’t, no matter how much I want to.”

“I will,” he says. “Karen, I— I’m sorry. About everything. But I’ll fix it.”

There’s a loud sniff, a thick swallow, the smell of tears in the air.

“You’d better,” Karen says sharply, though her voice cracks with emotion. “Now get going. I… I have work to do.”

It’s mostly the truth, Matt thinks. Or it reads that way. Karen’s still holding something back, but Karen is always holding something back. Matt still doesn’t know what happened to her in those days right before they caught Fisk. Maybe he’ll never know. Right now, he probably doesn’t deserve to.

“Goodbye, Karen,” he tells her as he leaves.

“I’ll see you soon, Matt.”

It’s a warning as much as it’s a farewell. Karen’s steel core reasserting itself. As soon as the door closes behind him, Matt can hear Karen moving. She steps up to her table, lifts the potted plant, and sets it in the windowsill again. Matt… Wonders.

But he keeps walking. Down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the sunshine.

“I am going to fix it,” he repeats softly, enough that no one else would ever be able to hear. “All of it.”

There’s a lot to make up for. And it’s not going to be easy. But Matt knows that this is right, this is what he needs to do. So he’s going to do it, and if he gets knocked down he’ll haul himself to his feet, no matter how many times it takes.

Murdock boys don’t quit, after all.


	9. A Crack in the Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt gets slapped. Daredevil stops an assassin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why Matt is giving me so much trouble this time around. He was really a doll in FHYP, but now...
> 
> Anyway, we're still a bit far-off from the plot at the moment, but expect Matt and Foggy to talk about things soon, though not necessarily resolve them, and after that we'll start making the Defenders rounds by checking in with the lovely Jessica Jones.

Matt can’t rely on Elektra’s money indefinitely. Or rather, he probably could but he’s not the kind of person who’s comfortable sitting around all day. He’s also not the kind of person who can afford to be held accountable to showing up to work every day looking uninjured. It was less of a problem at Nelson and Murdock, once Foggy knew. But the office is gone, and Foggy would probably rather go through the disaster that was Frank Castle's trial all over again than leave HC&B to throw his lot in with Matt.

Which is fine.

The point is, Matt can’t afford to have coworkers who don’t know his secret, and he can’t afford to tell anyone who doesn’t already know. But, again, he’s got a frankly obscene amount of money now.

He opens another office.

Smaller, even, than before, and just as ramshackle. It’s lonely, just him, but even with the Punisher case and the breakup of the firm and his several-month absence, there are at least a couple people in the city willing to go to Matt for legal help. He settles into a routine again, slowly.

And then one morning there’s a familiar click-click-click of heels in the hall.

Matt lifts his head and stands as too-strong perfume washes over him. By the time Marci Stahl opens the door, Matt’s moved from behind his desk and is standing in the entryway.

“Murdock. I heard you were back in town and didn’t believe it.”

Matt shrugs, holds his arms out to the sides as if to say, well, here I am.

“I returned just recently,” he tells her. “Didn’t really expect the welcome wagon from you, though, Marci.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath. Three sharp taps as she steps right into his space. And then a slight shift in the office’s still air as Marci lifts a hand. Matt knows exactly what she’s about to do with it, too. He could stop her, but keeping his identity secret is more important. The slap connects with a crack like thunder that rattles through Matt’s jawbone.

“He almost _died_ ,” Marci hisses. “ _Again_. And where the hell were you? Gone. You’re never where you’re supposed to be, Murdock, why is that?”

The demand – too sharp to be a true question – strikes harder than the physical blow.

“Just unlucky, I guess,” Matt grits out with a cold smile.

“Unlucky?” scoffs Marci. “Please. You’re lucky – damn lucky I just got my nails done, or that would have been a fist to the nose.”

Matt likes to think of himself as a patient man. He’s not, but he likes to think of himself that way. And Marci is really testing him.

“If you did punch me in the nose, you’d be more likely to break your fingers than anything, Miss Stahl. Have a nice day.”

It’s a very clear dismissal. Marci doesn’t leave, however.

“He cried,” she spits. “In that hospital room, with the door closed, when he thought no one could see. And you can go fuck yourself if you think you were worth even a single one of those tears.”

Matt’s head goes a little dizzy, his legs a little weak. He steadies himself with a hand on his desk, tries to make the motion look casual but doesn’t think he’s quite pulling it off.

He’s heard Foggy cry before. Smelled it. Even wiped a few warm, aching tears from Foggy’s cheeks in college when his stress had reached a meltdown stage and Matt had to coax him into taking care of himself. And, worse than all of that, Matt’s heard Foggy’s tears mixed with betrayal and humiliation, the day he found out about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Just hearing about Foggy crying shouldn’t be as gut-wrenching as it is, not after all that. And yet…

“I’m still on the clock. Is there a legal matter you wanted to discuss?” Matt forces past his bared teeth, as flatly as he can manage so the words don’t shake apart with emotion.

There’s a slight swish, a sway in the air as Marci shakes her head.

“My lunch break is only another thirty-five minutes,” she tells him sharply, “so I’m leaving now. But if you do anything to hurt him again… Well. I don’t think it will take much persuasion to convince Jones you need something a bit more physical than a restraining order.”

“Is that a threat,” Matt asks, not a single question in his voice.

Suddenly it’s easier to smile. Easier, because he knows what to do when he’s being attacked. This is his status quo, and he’s comfortable here.

“An observation,” Marci says, and sweeps out the door without bothering to close it or say goodbye.

Matt slides down the front of his desk until he’s seated on the floor. A shaky sigh passes his lips, then another.

It’s five minutes before he can make himself stand, make himself get back into his desk chair and work again.

* * *

Matt’s paranoia, despite the desperate struggle of his self-control to contain it, mounts after Marci’s visit. He hasn’t contacted Foggy since that first day, trying to avoid pushing too far and upsetting him, but he has been passing Foggy’s apartment on his rounds every night. Once at the beginning, and once more before heading back to his hotel room because he still hasn’t had any luck locating his old possessions and feels strangely averse to getting new furniture.

After Marci’s accusations, these two brief passes don’t seem like enough. They _aren’t_ enough.

So Matt begins knocking off a little early every evening – he’s his own boss for the purpose of setting his own hours, after all, so he might as well actually do it – donning the Daredevil suit, and following, er. _Escorting_ Foggy home. Secretly. Without him knowing. Just to be safe, to keep Foggy safe and put his own mind at ease, that’s all. It’s… It isn’t stalking, or anything. It’s just Matt taking a reasonable precaution.

On the third night, that precaution pays off. It starts out normal, and Matt only loosely concentrates on the other people in the area. Civilian, civilian… So it takes a couple blocks for him to notice that anything is out of place. But once Matt’s attention is caught, he doesn’t lose focus.

Someone else is following Foggy on his route home.

Unease prickles across Matt’s scalp. Something is… Wrong. Very wrong. Though he had been trailing Foggy by half a block or so, Matt speeds up so he’s closer. Nonetheless, he still isn’t fast enough. Before Matt can close the distance, Foggy’s being shoved into an alleyway and slammed into a wall. His heart beats out a panicked message, one that sets Matt’s feet flying over rooftops.

Woman, probably, Matt thinks blankly as he runs, by the way the attacker moves her weight, the sound of her footsteps on the ground. But trained. Well-trained. And armed.

There’s a blade in her hand – a smell of steel and blood – but she doesn’t get a chance to use it before Matt launches off the roof at her with a snarl.

“You _fucker_ ,” Foggy hisses under his breath, but his panicked heartbeat begins to slow.

Matt, for his part, is busy ducking so he doesn’t take a knife to the jaw. He’s on the defensive, but manages to keep himself firmly between the woman and Foggy no matter which way she moves to try and skirt him. He takes the blade in the side once, as he fishes out his clubs, then a second time as he catches the attacker’s feint, but the suit holds and the blade doesn’t cut through it.

Matt has to practically break the would-be assassin’s hand to get the knife away from her, and she stomps a boot into his knee while he’s knocking the blade far enough away that she won’t be able to retrieve it. But, as always, he fights through the pain. Deals her a matching blow to the leg, then dislocates her arm when she goes in for a punch.

Her head cracks the brick as he knocks her away, and it slows her enough that Matt’s able to pin her down.

“Who do you work for?” he growls, shaking the woman harshly.

She spits in his face. Matt can hear each individual speck of blood-tainted spittle as it hits his mask. He can feel the adrenaline coursing through his own body, feel every muscle tense.

“I won’t ask again,” he snarls at her, slamming her against the bricks.

“I don’t think she’s gonna talk,” Foggy points out faintly from behind him – Matt cocks his head to the side, catalogues Foggy’s shaky breathing, his shuddering heartbeat, the way he leans hard against the opposite wall.

He’s starting to go into shock, but not in need of medical attention. Not physically hurt, beyond a few bumps and scrapes. Good. Matt’s devil smile creeps across his face.

“I made the Russians talk,” he assures Foggy and the assassin both. “I’ll make her talk too.”

She snarls and lunges forward – an attempt to headbutt him in the jaw – but Matt just tips his head and lets her knock herself silly against his helmet. In hindsight he might have been better off leaning backwards because she loses consciousness then. Matt listens, waits, makes sure of it. But her heartbeat and her breathing are even, slow. She’s out cold.

“It’ll be a while,” Matt grumbles, irritated. “But as soon as she’s conscious again, Foggy, I swear, I’ll make her talk—”

“I’m not just going to stand around with my thumb up my ass and watch you torture someone!” snaps Foggy. “What the hell, man!”

Foggy’s heart rate is spiking again, and Matt’s surges to match it.

“She tried to kill you!”

There’s a rush of air as Foggy throws his hands up.

“Yeah! She did! I was kind of here for that! I guess it’s the newest fad in the criminal underworld! But that doesn’t mean that— Do you seriously think I want to see my…”

_Best friend doing this_. It’s unsaid, and with all that’s come between them, ‘best friend’ doesn’t seem like the right descriptor anymore, but they know each other too well for Matt to think the sentence could end any other way. He swallows.

“I…”

“Please,” Foggy says, forcefully but without much hope in his voice. “Please don’t.”

It’s the hopelessness that gets him in the end. The way Foggy’s tone seems to say, _I know nothing I say matters but I’m begging you for this anyway_. Matt drops the unconscious assassin.

“You should call the police,” he says gruffly, then leaps for the nearest fire escape.

Staying on the ground would leave him too… Close. Matt’s too wired for that kind of proximity now. His skin is prickling with shame and hurt and a job undone, and only the cool breeze on the rooftops can soothe his ruffled feathers. Matt doesn’t leave, though. He waits for the police to arrive, follows Foggy to the station and then back home.

And for the first time, he scales Foggy’s new apartment building and knocks at the window.

Like a miracle, it opens, and Matt hurries inside.

“Foggy, I’m—”

But he’s cut off immediately.

“You’re limping,” Foggy sighs. “Just… Sit your ass on the couch and let me fix you up, Matt.”

And, well, what else can he do? So Matt makes his way gingerly over to the couch and sits. Slowly, painfully, shucks off the Daredevil armor. All the while, he follows Foggy with his ears. To the bedroom, first, where he rifles through his dresser before tossing something out the door at Matt. Sweatpants, a soft t-shirt, and a thick pair of woolen socks. Oh.

“Thank you,” he offers meekly.

“Please, I’m not going to have you lounging around on my couch in just your underwear, what kind of girl do you take me for,” Foggy says, though there’s none of the humor in his voice that there normally would be.

It takes a lot more willpower than it should not to inhale against the fabric, which smells like comfort and home and Foggy. Shaking his head, Matt unfolds the clothes and puts them on, all the while listening to Foggy rustle around in what must be the bathroom. He returns just as Matt is rolling the socks up his feet, with a box smelling strongly of plastic. First aid kit.

Foggy sits so close as he doctors Matt’s few injuries that their thighs press together. Each touch – gentle, careful – makes Matt want to gather Foggy into his arms. To just hold him close. Breathe him in, feel that familiar pulse drumming against his skin. But that…

He can’t. So instead he focuses his itching fingers on picking at the fabric of Foggy’s couch.

“There,” Foggy says at last, clicking the first aid kit shut and standing with a rush of air that Matt can feel even through his clothes. “All done.”

“Can I… I want to stay. Tonight,” Matt blurts out, because he can’t, he can’t, he _can’t_ leave Foggy alone.

Not after that. Not after… He could have lost him. Again.

“Saving me now doesn’t suddenly make everything ok between us,” Foggy says, voice firm and heart steadily beating truth, truth, truth. “Especially not the way you go about it, Matt, Jesus.”

Matt’s mouth is dry.

“I…” he says. “I know. But I. Foggy, please, just… For now, I need—I need to know you’re safe. That you’re alive. Just… For tonight.”

The sigh that passes Foggy’s lips is so small and light that no one but Matt would be able to hear it. Just a wispy tendril of breath. A quiet surrender that gives away the answer before Foggy even speaks.

“Fine. Just for tonight.”


	10. There Are Always Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rest of the night Matt spends at Foggy's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ughhhhhhhh this chapter was a NIGHTMARE. It's always such a disaster trying to write these boys fighting. But, thank god, we're giving them a rest after this and moving on to see what Jessica's up to. Hear that, Matt? When you don't cooperate, we start following someone else's story for a while. Take that.

“Right,” Foggy says suddenly, several minutes into an awkward silence. “I forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“Your stuff. I…” Though Matt could hear him from three buildings away, Foggy still calls over his shoulder as he moves into his bedroom and picks something off the dresser with a clack. “I saved it – your furniture, your clothes, your Braille display. Well. Pretty much all the things you left behind. Everything but the kitchen sink, as they say.”

Foggy returns to the living room, turning the item – small, metal – over and over in his palm. A subtler, more anxious version of his habit of tossing a softball from hand to hand while thinking. It’s—Comforting, sort of. Because the movements are so familiar, because this is a part of Foggy’s body language that Matt can read and that he still knows.

“Most of it’s in storage – this key’s for unit 964 at Everett Storage – but I kept your trunk here,” Foggy explains in a carefully neutral voice, pressing the skin-warm piece of metal – key – into Matt’s hand. “I should’ve… Probably, last time I should have given you the key, but. You kinda. I panicked.”

He gives a soft, self-deprecating laugh and makes his way to the corner of the room, next to the couch. Matt slips the storage unit key into a pocket absently, all his focus on tracking his old trunk by the sound of its scrape across the floor and the puff of Foggy’s breath. Now that he thinks to focus, Matt realizes that it still smells, faintly, of his apartment.

It’s not gone. Everything is… Foggy kept…

Matt isn’t sure what he feels, except that it leaves him wobbly and light and a little breathless.

He kneels down next to the trunk when Foggy steps away, and flips open the lid gently. It only takes a minute or two of sifting to figure out that it’s exactly as he left it.

“You… You kept my stuff,” Matt says past the lump in his throat, rubbing the fabric of his father’s boxing robe between his fingers and trying desperately not to cry.

“Course I did,” Foggy mutters uncomfortably. “No one else was gonna do it.”

There’s the slightest of creaks as Foggy shifts his weight from foot to foot, and an extra heat off the skin of his face that Matt knows means he’s flushed pink. A sudden wave of fondness washes over Matt, squeezing his heart in his chest.

“Even then, you… You didn’t have to do it,” he says. “But you did anyway.”

“It… It was your stuff. It had… I couldn’t just let your landlord auction it off like it was garbage. That was, you know, your whole life in there. Everything you…”

Foggy can’t seem to finish the sentence, just swallows several times and falls silent.

“I don’t deserve you,” Matt realizes with a sad smile.

He can hear Foggy shift uncomfortably again.

“No one does,” Foggy replies at last, voice pitched for humor.

It’s too bright to be sincere. But at least it’s not a flat ‘no, you really don’t’. Matt will take what he can get.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he says, and this time the tears do fall, because this is…

All the anger, the pain and frustration and grief that’s still rolling off Foggy in waves, still fresh even months after Matt’s abandonment, and yet he’d saved it all. More than that, he’d kept Matt’s trunk, the thing containing his most irreplaceable possessions, not in the storage unit with everything else but close and protected in his own home. As though Foggy had tucked a piece of himself that Matt had lost into his own heart for safekeeping.

“Oh, fuck it,” Foggy mutters under his breath before speaking at normal volume again. “It’s not like it was purely selfless and we both know it, Matt. I mean it’s. It was your stuff, yeah, but it was what I had left of you too. We both know I’m not exactly known for, you know, letting go.”

He’s not, Matt supposes, but. Most people have the good sense not to try and make him in the first place. Foggy’s personable and a good listener, always willing to help… Who wouldn’t want that in their life? Even Matt’s own reasoning for cutting Foggy out had been more about keeping him safe or – less nobly and perhaps more honestly – more about protecting himself from being abandoned again by leaving first. It hadn’t been that he’d lost interest in being Foggy’s friend, because who would?

“You would have gotten over it,” Matt says, wonders if he should have said ‘me’ and then is glad he didn’t. “Eventually.”

Everyone else always seems to, after all. Matt’s easy to get over, _must_ be, since so many people walk out of his life and never look back.

Foggy’s laugh is sharp and ugly.

“Right,” he retorts. “Uh huh. Haven’t gotten over it in ten years, buddy, but sure, I would’ve gotten over it. God, I can’t tell if you’re just spouting bullshit or if you really fooled yourself into believing that.”

“Foggy—”

“I was _in love_ with you, Matt,” Foggy admits, his voice cracking painfully. “But, hey, you knew that already, right?”

“I knew,” Matt agrees, even though his surety in Foggy’s affections had vanished the moment their friendship devolved into a shouting match in a courthouse restroom. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry— Jesus, Matt, _that’s_ what you’re sorry for? Knowing I was in love with you?”

“That’s not what I—” Matt takes a deep, angry breath and centers himself. “I’m sorry I hurt you. That I got you hurt. All of it. I’m sorry… I wasn’t what you needed me to be.”

“All I needed you to be was safe and honest and my friend. Why was that so _hard_ for you?”

Because Matt’s not a safe person. He’s not an honest person. He’s not even, he thinks, a particularly good friend. But he’d _wanted_ to be all those things, for Foggy. It’s what made the lies so easy, even after they stopped being necessary or a good idea. It was the only way he could be the kind of person Foggy deserved, the kind of person Foggy needed in his life. If he just hid the parts of himself, the sharp edges that always tore people away, then maybe…

Not that it had done any good.

“I’m sorry, Foggy. I didn’t… I wanted to be everything you needed. I did. It’s not you,” Matt insists, “you have to know that, I’m just… I’m not good at… Being with people. Opening up. It wasn’t fair to you, but I just wanted, I thought… I thought I was doing what was best.”

“Of course you did,” Foggy sighs. “Look, Matt. I don’t want to talk about this anymore, alright? I’m tired. I’m stressed out. I just want to go to bed.”

“Right… Right, sure.”

Another loud, full-body sigh from Foggy makes Matt cringe. He knows things are… He gets it. Really. But it doesn’t mean he enjoys knowing his presence is so much of an emotional strain on Foggy. He tries to stay as small and quiet as he can while Foggy rummages through a closet for extra bedding.

“Here you go, Matt,” he says when he returns. “Pillow, sheet, duvet. Not silk but, they’re a hell of a lot nicer than that 100-thread count crap you slept on at Columbia anyway.”

Matt tries for a smile as he accepts the bedding and begins setting up the couch to sleep on.

“Thanks, Fog.”

“Yeah, sure thing.”

Foggy heads to his bedroom then, and closes the door behind him without even a goodnight. Curling up on the couch, Matt lets out his own soft sigh.

“Night, Foggy,” he murmurs under his breath.

He’s a lot more tired than he thought, Matt realizes. He drifts off to the sound of Foggy’s restless heartbeat, too fast for sleep.

* * *

When Matt wakes, startled, unsettled, it’s to the sound of Foggy’s heart again. Fast, again, but with panic. He’s still asleep, though, Matt realizes as he focuses more closely.

A nightmare.

Matt can only imagine what about. Another about Fisk? Or maybe about the assassin who’d tried to kill him a few hours ago? Or, for flavor, what about his near-death at the hands of the Blacksmith, or his wounding from when Fisk had bombed the Russians? Matt hadn’t been able to keep him safe any of those times.

Every part of him aches to enter Foggy’s room, to smooth a hand across his forehead and try to ease him from his nightmare into a more peaceful sleep. But Matt knows better than to do that. Trying to wake Foggy or trying to soothe him might only make his panic mount at the presence of someone in his bedroom, might exacerbate his fears, and that’s not something Matt’s willing to risk. So he sits cross-legged with his back to the door and waits, all his senses trained on the bedroom and on Foggy, sleeping restlessly inside.

It’s a sort of torture, he thinks, listening and knowing he’s not welcome. Matt’s fists are clenched so tightly that his nails are digging half-moons of sharp pain into his palms. Still, he doesn’t move. He won’t move. He’s going to watch over Foggy but he’s not going to overstep the bounds set by the closed door. He’s not.

But then…

“ _Matt_ ,” Foggy chokes out – breathless, afraid, still asleep.

There’s not a force on heaven or earth that could stand between Matt and that plea.

He’s through the door and at Foggy’s side in an instant. Doesn’t even hesitate to crawl onto the bed and pull Foggy into his arms because this—he wasn’t there when he should have been but he’s here _now_ , he can answer this call for help _now_.

Foggy startles awake with a rasping, terrified gasp that must ache in his throat, and Matt hugs him closer.

“Matt—”

“I’m here,” he murmurs into Foggy’s hair, rocking them back and forth. “I’m right here, Foggy. You’re safe.”

Foggy sinks into the touch for a moment, soothed, but then seems to come back to himself and pulls away sharply.

“Don’t.”

“I—I just want to help—”

“This doesn’t—!” The lie peters out there, and Foggy hisses an angry exhale through his teeth. “I don’t want… I can’t rely on this, Matt. I won’t.”

“You don’t believe me,” Matt realizes hollowly, and his rocking slows to a stop. “You don’t think I’ll stay. I promised I’d fix things between us, Foggy. Is… Is it really so hard to believe I’ll keep my promise?”

“I mean—Come on, Matt, in what universe does the idea that you _will_ make any sense at all?”

Matt flinches a little. The words aren’t said particularly harshly, but the surety of them is cutting. The way Foggy pushes him away physically is more cutting still.

“What’s that supposed to mean, Fog?” Matt demands.

There’s a slight _wssh_ of air as Foggy tosses his hands up in frustration.

“Really? You don’t see it?” he asks Matt. “Sure, you didn’t give up the fighting but you definitely gave up the Daredevil mantle for Elektra – the certainty that the city ‘needs you in that mask’. You would never have done that for me. And yeah I didn’t like that – mostly because I didn’t like seeing you beat to shit every day – but I respected it. I just… How can you expect me to believe you’re seriously choosing me and New York over her or, or instead of her, permanently – when it’s pretty clear that in terms of priority I rank solidly below Daredevil and we both lost out to Elektra?”

The words knock the air from Matt’s lungs.

_This is what he thinks?_

And the pain of that is worse than… Worse than any physical pain he’s experienced up to this point.

“That isn’t true!” Matt insists, shaking his head.

“You’re kidding, right? Of course it’s true. You’ve said that you’re going to stay, that you want to fix things, but you haven’t put down roots, not really. And even if you had, who says they’d be any more permanent than the last ones?”

In desperation, Matt grabs for Foggy’s hands, but they’re snatched away almost immediately with an angry, incoherent noise.

“It’s not true,” he tells Foggy. “It isn’t, I. Fog, come on. I mean it, I want to fix this, so just—Won’t you just tell me what I have to do? What will… What will convince you?”

“Honestly? I don’t know if there’s anything that can. Matt there’s just so much, and I can’t… I can’t.”

“Then tell me. At least—tell me what’s wrong. Tell me what hurts,” urges Matt, at a loss but determined to slog through anyway, to keep going because if he stops he’s giving up.

And he can’t give up, not on this.

“What good will yelling at you about it do, Matt?” sighs Foggy. “It doesn’t make me feel better. None of this— You’ll just do what you want anyway. You always have.”

Matt grabs at Foggy’s hands again, doesn’t let him tug them away.

“What I want is to make up for the way I’ve hurt you, Foggy!” he insists. “And part of that is getting everything out in the open.”

This time, Foggy only attempts to pull one hand from Matt’s grasp, so Matt lets it go and hears the soft press of skin on skin as Foggy rubs a hand down his face, rubs the sleep from his eyes.

“You really want to talk about this that badly? Fine. But we’re not doing it on my bed. Couch,” Foggy orders.

Matt hurriedly releases Foggy’s other hand and makes his way to the couch – nearly tripping over the discarded duvet in the process – before Foggy can change his mind. Foggy follows in his wake, footsteps heavy and trudging with exhaustion. Matt feels a prickle of guilt low in his gut, but pushes it away. They need this. They do.

“I mean,” Foggy says as he drops onto the couch, as far from Matt as he can get. “I think the stuff with Fisk is… Pretty obvious. I mean, you pointed him right at me and then left.”

That assessment slams into him, sends Matt’s breathing into spasms so that it takes nearly a minute to get himself under control again.

“It… It wasn’t like that,” Matt pleads. “I never, I would _never_ — I _told_ him it wasn’t you, that you weren’t a part of—”

“But you’re a shitty liar and he didn’t believe you,” says Foggy, shaking his head – a swish of hair, and the smell in the air is more Foggy himself than his shampoo. “And you know what, that’s a flaw I can forgive, ok? That at least I knew about you before all… But then, you just— You didn’t _tell_ me! You didn’t tell me and I had no freaking clue Wilson Fisk even knew who I was, let alone that he was going to try and kill me.”

That, at least, Matt knows he’s fully responsible for.

“I,” he chokes out. “I know. I was… When he made that threat, I don’t… You’d just been shot and I didn’t want to frighten you more. I thought I could handle it, protect you and you’d never have to know—”

“Because that’s always worked so well for you,” Foggy mutters under his breath.

Matt shakes his head and keeps going anyway.

“I shouldn’t have… There was so much going on that I completely… I forgot about Fisk because everything else kept piling higher and higher, and— But it’s no excuse. I was supposed to keep you safe, Foggy, and I didn’t. But I… I will, from now on, I won’t let him or anyone who wants to hurt you get near you again,” he promises, and clutches at the fabric of his sweatpants to stop his hands from trembling “Like that woman tonight. I won’t let you get hurt again, I _won’t_. I… I can’t.”

He can’t. Because he wouldn’t survive it. To lose Foggy, forever, to know that it was his own fault for not being able to protect him… Matt’s failed people before. He’s lost people before. He knows the feeling of his father’s face, still warm with life long gone, and he never wants to feel that again. Intellectually, he knows there’s little a nine-year-old boy could have done against a mob hitman, but Matt knows in some way that death is still on him, still his fault. Because his father had won the match for him.

Now that he’s older, now that he has the strength and the knowledge to fight and protect the people he cares about, he can’t let anything like that happen again.

Matt’s drawn out of his thoughts by Foggy, letting out a long breath.

“Jesus, Matt. It’s not… No matter how pissed I am about everything else, whatever happened tonight, that wasn’t on you,” Foggy murmurs. “I’m not going to blame you, or listen to you pre-emptively blame yourself. The shit I’ve been looking into was bound to catch up to me at some point. I made the decision to dig into it. If I get hurt because of that, then it’s my own fault. And even the stuff with Fisk, I mean… I’m angry, really angry, but that’s not even the biggest problem I have with what you’ve done, Matt. You’ve gotta know that.”

Matt nods, slowly, although he knows that Foggy’s safety is on him, one hundred percent. But he’s… If Foggy’s willing to think kindly of him about anything, Matt won’t argue.

“I made you think you weren’t important,” he suggests, shoulders hunched. “I… I pulled away, and I hurt you.”

“No,” says Foggy, his voice harsh.

There’s a slight creak as Foggy stands, and his heart is beating an agitated rhythm.

“I’m…” Matt shakes his head. “I don’t…”

“It’s not about you _hurting my feelings,_ Matt. Or… It’s not just about that. I’m not eighteen anymore, I’ll get over it!” Foggy snaps, and his hands are an angry flurry that sets the air in the room spinning as he paces. “But everything else? We’re _adults_! We have _responsibilities_! Like to our _clients_ , Matt! Do you even remember the Frank Castle case? He might have been a raging _psycho_ , but he was our client! Our client that _you_ made me take on, no less! And you not only weren’t there, you not only let Hurricane Elektra back into your life so she could screw us out of evidence we needed on the record, you egged Castle into a total breakdown that lost us the case just so you could feel morally superior about _your_ vigilante justice compared to _his_! So please, tell me more about how the life we built together wasn’t less important to you than punching mobsters and ninjas in back alleys!”

Foggy finally falls silent, panting heavily. He’s trembling, wrung out – it’s something Matt’s experienced before, though to a lesser degree, when a professor at Columbia had accused Foggy of plagiarism. A quick, violent burst of anger, vented quickly and expressed with all the energy in Foggy’s body. Matt knows he’ll have to tread carefully from here, even though it’s decidedly not his specialty.

He stands up from the couch slowly, hands out in a calming gesture.

“I’m sorry, Foggy. And you… You don’t have to believe me, but I am. I never meant to—I was stressed, but that’s not an excuse, I know it’s not an excuse,” he admits quietly. “But what I did… Stopping the Hand, trying to keep them from killing people… It wasn’t about punching people in back alleys, Fog. It was about protecting people. Protecting Hell’s Kitchen so that you and Karen and everyone would be safe. So that we’d all be alive to keep taking cases at all.”

But Foggy’s heartrate is ramping up again, Matt can hear the flex in his hands as Foggy balls them into angry fists.

“That’s—You seriously think that’s going to fly as a motivation? I was here! Nelson and Murdock was here! Karen was here! And even if none of the rest of us stacked up to the importance of saving the city, Hell’s Kitchen was here too! But you left anyway! So fuck you, Matt!” he shouts over his shoulder, storming towards his bedroom door.

Then Foggy slams it closed again, and this time he locks it. From his head to his toes, Matt’s body prickles with cold, and he tries very hard to breath evenly but doesn’t succeed. For several minutes he just sits there, trembling, trying not to listen through the walls to Foggy stifling angry sobs.

And then with a sudden, reckless desperation, Matt scrambles for his trunk – for his father’s boxing robe again. He presses the fabric to his cheek, runs his fingers over it like the security blanket it never had a chance to be.

Matt doesn’t fall asleep again, just waits for morning – bundled in the duvet, his fingers playing over the blocky letters sewn onto the back of the robe. Foggy doesn’t have another nightmare, at least. Foggy’s dreams, when he slips into them and his breathing changes, sound slow and steady and send him into a familiar heavy snore.

When he finally begins to stir, Matt folds up the bedding on the couch and stuffs his Daredevil armor into the trunk with the robe. Then he steals out of the apartment in Foggy’s sweats and a pair of ratty sneakers left by the door. He carries the trunk in his arms and the storage unit key in his pocket.

He could have donned his armor again and leapt over the rooftops, but not with the trunk. And even if coming back to get it would be the perfect excuse to visit Foggy again… So is returning his clothes.

And, well… Matt wants to bask in Foggy’s scent a little longer. To feel the warmth, however imagined, that wearing Foggy’s clothes brings him.


	11. Typical Bullshit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jessica Jones is just trying to live her life. As usual, she gets caught up in some ridiculous crap. This time there's ninjas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me... Forever to write. Hopefully it was worth the wait. We're starting into the Defenders stuff now, but it's going to go pretty different from canon, especially since the Hand doesn't have zombie!Elektra around to assassinate people for them.

Jessica Jones is not working a case. And it’s not that she’s having a— relapse, or an incident, or whatever. She just doesn’t feel like working, that’s all. It’s not like she’s lying in bed in a drunken stupor or anything, she’s actually, you know, doing things. But just because she’s doing something doesn’t mean she’s working a case.

“It’s not a case,” she tells Malcolm firmly when he looks at her with a hopeful getting-ready-to-be-proud-of-you expression.

“It sure looks like a case,” he points out, like an asshole.

“Well it’s not.”

It’s just… Idle curiosity. Nelson had asked her to pull up some stuff about Fisk’s assets, and she’d gotten caught up in the details. That’s all. Malcolm, apparently not dissuaded, folds his hands behind his back and rocks on his heels a little.

“So. Would you like a little help with this thing that’s not a case?” he asks.

It wouldn’t be… A terrible idea. It’s not like any of this is super time sensitive considering the glacial speed of the justice system, but the sooner it’s done the better.

“Fine,” grunts Jess. “Pull up a chair.”

Malcolm does. His posture is irritatingly perky and eager, but she doesn’t comment.

“Well then,” he says, folding his hands in his lap. “What are we not-working on here?”

“This—” Jess smacks the pile of papers to her left. “Is everything the Feds seized from Fisk. And this—” Same motion, but to the stack of paper on her right. “Is everything connected to the company that owns the warehouse Fisk tried to kill Nelson in.”

“You’re trying to find a connection,” Malcolm realizes. “For the court case?”

Jess nods.

“We get this shit done before it goes to trial, we can strip away whatever’s left of Fisk’s resources. But that means making a connection, and so far I’ve found zip.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

So they settle in. It’s completely mind-numbing, which sucks. If she’d been able to get digital copies, it’d be a hell of a lot easier. But she hadn’t, so there they were doing the legwork on paper. Checking, rechecking their list every so often. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Jess’s frustration mounts with every line she reads, and she eventually takes to pacing in jagged steps. One-two-three towards the door, one-two-three back to the desk. One-two-th—

_Clink_.

Jess blinks hard, glances away from the papers in her hands to look at the floor. There’s a shard of brown glass by her shoe, and she furrows her brow staring at it. She hasn’t broken a bottle in ages. Not since—

Ah. _Murdock_.

Just thinking about Murdock, about his posture and his fake smile and the way he acted like Nelson is his to protect again just because he’s back makes her want to punch something. She settles for tossing the broken shard in her trash can and drinking more heavily while she works instead, because she can’t afford a new desk and she can only sublimate her anger properly with the help of bottom-shelf whiskey.

“Why don’t we go out and get some coffee?” suggests Malcolm after another twenty minutes of this, which is completely transparent, but Jess’s eyes are starting to burn with strain and she’s sick of the smell of her apartment, so she agrees anyway.

She also tucks a flask of whiskey into her coat, so she can give her damn coffee some kick. Malcolm clearly notices but doesn’t comment. Smart of him.

* * *

They run into Trish on their way back from the coffee shop, and Jess isn’t sure whether that was by design or not. Still, it’s… Nice. Trish is heading in for work, so she looks all nice and put-together – as opposed to Jess, who hasn’t checked a mirror but knows she probably looks like a mess because she always looks like a mess. _Literary foils_ , Jess thinks wryly.

Not that any of that matters, at least when Trish smiles at her.

“Nice to see you up before noon,” she teases. “New case?”

Part of Jess wants to scowl, stick out her tongue, something. She finds herself smiling back – or smirking, maybe, a little tilt of the lips and no teeth – instead.

“Not working,” she says briskly. “Already told you that.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Malcolm disagrees. “We’re helping Foggy with something.”

Which sends the two of them off into a discussion about rich people dodging the law. Jess sighs and follows along next to them anyway. They’re ridiculous, meddling do-gooders, but they’re, you know, _her_ ridiculous meddling do-gooders.

Eventually, their paths split – Trish heads to her studio, and Jess and Malcolm continue on to Alias Investigations. It’s quieter, without Trish to hold down the conversation, and if the look on Malcolm’s face is any indication, he’s thinking about something. Hard.

“What?” she asks him eventually.

Malcolm shakes his head.

“It’s just… What if we’re looking at this wrong?”

“Wrong?” wonders Jess as they climb the stairs. “Wrong how?”

“I had a thought,” Malcolm explains. “Maybe the girlfriend—”

“Excuse me! You— you’re Jessica Jones, right?”

For a long moment, Jess eyes the shockingly generic middle-aged, middle-class white woman and the surly, curly-haired teenager standing next to her.

“Who’s asking?” she finally demands.

“My name is Michelle Raymond. This is my daughter Lexi. Please, we need your help—”

“I’m not taking cases—”

“At least listen to them,” Malcolm suggests, gentle and cajoling.

He does that big-eyed look all her acquaintances seem capable of now. Jess hates it. Fuck Trish for teaching people about that look.

But, with an irritated sigh and her hands planted on her hips, Jess turns back to look at the woman and her daughter.

“Fine,” she says. “What the hell do you want?”

* * *

What they want, she finds out, is for her to find their missing husband-slash-father, one John Raymond. He’s been troubled lately, shifty, and now he’s vanished. He’s probably holed up in a motel room with a prostitute or something, but she at least has enough self-awareness not to tell them that right out. See? She’s learning.

Part of the reason she doesn’t is that Mrs. Raymond has a file of preliminary information with her. It’s the kind of foresight most people don’t have, and it endears her to Jess. Just a little, though.

“This isn’t me agreeing to take your case,” she says as she accepts the folder.

“The only reason you won’t is that you’re a drunk fraud and you can’t do it,” the daughter sneers.

Jess flips through the file folder Mrs. Raymond handed her and scoffs.

“An architect? You think an architect can give me the slip? Fuck off.”

Malcolm clears his throat, tries desperately to silently indicate that maybe Jess should stop swearing at minors and also their potential clients. She ignores him.

And then her eyes catch on a name, and that name is familiar.

Duncan + Dotter Design.

_Shit_.

“Your husband works for this company?” she demands of Mrs. Raymond, all but shoving the folder under her nose.

“Yes, he’s worked there for years. Is that important?”

“Maybe,” says Jess, distracted.

She tosses John Raymond’s file on her desk and starts digging through Fisk’s papers. Somewhere, somewhere… She can’t find it.

“Jess…?” Malcolm asks.

She waves him off distractedly.

“I’m taking the case. Escort the Raymonds to the door, will you? I think I’ve got something here.”

And then she’s lost in the papers again. Dates, transactions, companies… And that name. Somewhere, she’s seen that name.

* * *

By the time Malcolm returns to her side, she’s found what she was looking for.

“There.” Jess points halfway down the page. “And there. And there. They worked on at least eight of Fisk’s construction projects across the city.”

“You think it’s connected to John Raymond’s disappearance?”

“Well it’s not a coincidence, that’s for sure,” Jess says, slinging off her jacket. “Or if it is, it’s a hell of one.”

She sits at her desk, rolls her shoulders, and picks up the phone.

* * *

It’s the second truest truth of Jess’s life – right after You Fuck Up Everything You Touch – no one suspects you of phishing or social engineering if you sound like a ditz.

“I am just— _Such_ a big fan of Mr. Raymond’s work,” Jess enthuses over the line at the Duncan + Dotter secretary taking her call. “It’s, like, _exactly_ what I’m looking for. Is there a way I can get a list of the buildings he’s done? To, like, show some of the board members and stuff? I am just _so_ sure they’ll love it too!”

It takes twenty minutes of high-pitched wheedling and three transfers to managers to get the information she needs, and Malcolm is making increasingly conflicted weirded-out slash amused faces at her the whole time. She flips him off while cheerfully bidding Duncan + Dotter Designs farewell.

And now she just has to run every building through city records, compare them with her list of Fisk’s acquisitions, and figure out whether Fisk had something to do with John Raymond’s disappearance. So that’s… Awesome. Jess rubs a hand over her face and sighs loudly.

“Malcolm?”

“Yeah?” he asks.

“You were saying something about Fisk’s girlfriend. Like, half an hour ago.”

He starts to attention, nodding eagerly.

“Right, so,” he tells her, sifting through a few of the papers on the desk. “I was thinking, what if some of the buildings that weren’t seized were connected to her instead of Fisk himself, to throw things off?”

It makes sense. A lot of sense. Jess, despite herself, claps Malcolm lightly on the shoulder.

“Good. You look into that, and I’ll handle the Raymond case.”

And then she’s grabbing up her jacket and heading out the door before he can get a word in edgewise.

* * *

It’s been over an hour and Jess is halfway up a ladder and digging through a folder of records when someone calls for her. She ignores it, obviously, and keeps rifling.

“What are you doing here?” the person proceeds anyway, and Jess sighs loudly and glances down.

Karen Page. Looking very put-together and classy. Good for her. Jess doesn’t know Page personally, though they run into each other a lot on the job. She knows Page is Nelson’s…

Well, she’s Nelson’s. In the way that Trish is Jess’s.

Which deserves at least a modicum of respect, she guesses.

“Hey,” Jess grunts at her, then turns back to her work. “Just… Case stuff, Page. Boring shit.”

It’s a brush-off. Definitely a little rude, not that Jess particularly cares. It’s just that she’s sort of started noticing shit like that more lately. Ugh. She’s been spending way too much time with Nelson, the man is like a walking dictionary of affability and friendship. Anyway, Page wanders off when she realizes Jess isn’t biting, and Jess is way too busy scouring building records for Fisk’s brand of nefarious bullshit to see which direction she goes.

There are some relatively promising buildings, she finds as she continues down her list, but none of them seem quite right. Nothing seems to fit. Most went up in the early days, before Fisk even showed his face on TV, and haven’t been touched by the architectural company since; there’s no reason they should have caused John Raymond to freak out suddenly out of nowhere. But since her list is chronological, it stands to reason that the closer to the bottom she gets, the closer she gets to why John Raymond vanished off the face of the earth.

The final building he worked on isn’t one that belonged to Fisk, though. On a hunch, Jess decides to check out its records anyway. Only to find Page already there, flicking through the file with a troubled expression.

“Page.”

“Oh!” Page closes the folder. “Jess. Hi. What is it?”

Jess sighs.

“I need that file,” she says, gesturing at it.

Page looks down at the file thoughtfully, drums her fingers over it. Jess knows that routine. Tit for tat, Page is saying without saying anything at all. Fucking hell. Reporters.

“And… What do you need it for?”

Yup. There it is. Jess rolls her eyes.

“For research, Page, what else?”

“Are you looking into Fisk?” demands Page, squaring her shoulders.

“Kinda. You know, tangentially. Are you?”

A shrug of the shoulders, halfhearted nod. So, yeah.

“After,” she tells Jess, getting a little choked up; her face goes red like she’s going to cry, but she doesn’t. “After what happened to Foggy, I. I just want to make sure Fisk can never do that again. Never… Hurt any of us like that again. And that means knowing as much as I can about everything he was involved in.”

Which doesn’t quite make sense.

“Midland Circle isn’t one of Fisk’s assets though.”

“He had the building once. It used to be a set of apartments,” Page explains, and swallows hard. “But then he sold it, to whoever owns Midland Circle Financial. Only, he tried to lease a floor of the building, and was rejected. Everything else got a positive response, everything else Fisk was able to buy. But not this place.”

“That’s why it’s not in the list of his property at the time of his arrest,” Jess realizes. “He couldn’t get it. Midland Circle Financial wouldn’t deal. And my architect worked on it, it was his last project before he bailed.”

“They’re the odd ones out, then,” Page says uncertainly.

“Yup,” agrees Jess, flicking through search results on her phone. “But what the _fuck_ do they finance? We just don’t know! I can’t find anything.”

Page nods, clutching the file tighter to her like it’s about to disappear.

“Then we go back farther,” she says with steely determination.

“Yeah,” agrees Jess.

So they go back. And back. And back more. They crisscross the entire room, shelf to shelf, digging up the past and writing names, snapping photos of documents. They get back to the 1800s before the trail goes cold, before there’s no more documentation to find.

“That’s the end?”

Page sounds frustrated. It’s a feeling Jess knows well.

“Subsidiary, shell corporation, shell corporation, subsidiary, shell corporation,” Jess says flatly, pointing to successive lines on the list of chicken scratch. “It just. Keeps. Going. Whatever this place is really up to, it’s old as hell and sketchy as hell. Probably what my guy got tangled up in. Making Fisk a red herring, for once in his fucking life. Which is good to know, but it doesn’t tell me the location of my target.”

Still, it’s more than she had when she showed up. And she can track John Raymond from her office, she doesn’t need to shuffle through city records for that. Jess leaves Page to her new conspiracy and goes home to see what Malcolm has been digging up in her absence.

* * *

Malcolm found a lot of shit when looking up Vanessa Marianna, but nothing related to the place Nelson was taken.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “I really thought…”

“Nah. It was a good thought. And this might still be useful, since the Feds are supposedly still looking for her. Anyway, now I need your help on this.”

They spend the rest of the day tracking John Raymond together, sifting through evidence. It takes three pots of coffee, another bottle of whiskey, and a hell of a lot of grunt work, but at nine-thirty pm they finally decide on a possible hiding place for their missing architect.

As for why he’s there… There are two options. Either John Raymond ran away, or he’s been taken by someone at Midland Circle who wants to keep him quiet. Jess’s money is on ‘ran away’, but that’s no guarantee. And also, even if he did leave of his own volition it doesn’t mean Midland Circle hasn’t caught up to him. She’ll have to be on guard for anything.

* * *

Checking in with people, Jess decides the next day while Trish stares her down stubbornly, is complete bullshit.

“Jess.”

“No.”

“I can help! You know I can—“

“No!” Jess insists, louder, to cow Trish and to cover the panic leeching into her veins like a drug. “You want a job, Trish? Look after Nelson. There’s no way I’m taking a person with a _talk show_ into this shit with me!”

“Jess, you need backup!”

Yeah, probably, but she’s not tagging Miss Ponytail Krav Maga in, that’s for fucking sure. Trish doesn’t have superstrength or super-anything. She’s not enhanced, she’s just stubborn and Jess can’t, Jess _can’t_ —

She squeezes down, hard, on her body’s desire to hyperventilate. It’s got shit to do with fucking Kilgrave, but Jess spits out street names under her breath like invective anyway. Birch Street. Higgins Drive. Mother. Fucking. Cobalt. Lane.

Finally, the dizziness, the panic, passes, and only the anger is left behind.

“I’m my own backup,” Jess tells Trish. “Weren’t you the one all gung-ho about me working again? So let me fucking work.”

Which doesn’t get her a fight, or a dismissal. Doesn’t get her fucking anything except Trish’s hand on hers, a light squeeze, sad blue eyes.

“I’m just worried. You said they’re on 44th and 11th. If Foggy’s right about that block...” Trish replies quietly.

Fuck. Yeah, because Nelson just had to let them all in on it, Trish included. The stupid, nebulous warning that something was going down near 44th and 11th and it was No Damn Good. But it isn’t like Jess is going after Midland Circle itself. She’s just gonna find John Raymond for his family and politely suggest they all get the hell outta dodge.

She sighs.

“It’s one guy, Trish. Just one guy, ok? An average jackass. I’m not trying to— Topple any evil corporations or— Whatever’s going down at Midland Circle, I’m leaving it alone.”

Trish looks like she wants to argue more, but she only sighs and squeezes Jess’s hand again.

“Just… Be safe, Jess.”

* * *

When Jess gets back to her office, Page is waiting outside the door looking agitated and determined in equal measure.

“You’re going after them, aren’t you? Midland Circle Financial? For your case?”

“No,” Jess tells her, just as firmly as she did Trish.

“Take me with you.”

“Also no,” Jess retorted, opening her door. “Look, I’m searching for one guy, Page. I have no interest in Midland Circle. Less than no interest.”

“You could use help on this.”

“Yeah, maybe, but—there’s danger-prone, Page, and then there’s _you_.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” insists Page.

Jess rolls her eyes.

“Seriously,” she snaps. “If shit goes down with these asshats, I’m not gonna be the one to tell Nelson you got yourself killed. Just stay put.”

Then Page just pulls a fucking gun out of her purse and holds it out loosely, looking stupidly determined. Jess kind of wants to brain herself with a bottle of scotch.

“I’m armed. I can take care of myself, and I want to help. You shouldn’t go in there without backup.”

Just like Trish.  Except unlike Trish, Page was no kind of functional adult, and it was a pretty sure bet that nothing Jess could say to her would sway her. She’d just sneak along anyway like Nancy fucking Drew. Fuck.

“Fine,” spits Jess. “But you remember, Page, _backup_ means stay _back_ unless I call for you. Nelson’ll kill me if you get hurt.”

The huge smile she gets in response is not at all reassuring.

* * *

Jess isn’t sure what to expect when she opens the door to the building – small, currently empty, a Duncan + Dotter lot that’s up for sale but with no takers. Could be anything. Except, there’s no one there. She steps further inside, lets the door close behind her. Still no one. She turns a corner.

Ah. No one but John Raymond, pointing a gun at her with a shaking hand.

“Who are you?” he demands.

Jess sighs and puts her hands up. Why is this her life?

“My name is Jessica Jones,” she tells him. “I’m a PI. Your wife hired me to find you—”

“No! I can’t go home! It isn’t _safe_!”

“Look, can you just put the damn gun down?” Jess snaps.

* * *

It takes another ten minutes to calm the guy down enough to get John Raymond to talk at all. On the bright side, it gives Jess the time to text Page and get her to go the hell home.

“They’re gonna kill me,” John says, and the shake in his voice is real even if Jess has no patience for it.

“Who?” she demands, frustrated. “Who’s going to kill you? Midland Circle Financial? Duncan + Dotter Design? Who?”

John shakes his head.

“I, I can’t, they’ll—”

“I’ll stop you there,” interrupts Jess. “It already sounds like whoever it is wants to kill you, so you might as well spill the fucking beans.”

For a few seconds, he wavers, but finally he crumbles. After a few minutes of parsing out his stammering about a crazy ass ninja death cult associated with Midland Circle, she kind of wishes he didn’t. For fuck’s sake. That’s like, some serious Avengers bullshit. It’s miles above her paygrade and lightyears above John Raymond’s.

There’s really only one path to take, here.

“Look,” she tells him, hands on her hips. “We get your family, we get you all out of the city, you hand over whatever it is you’ve got on these people, and I’ll make sure it gets into the right hands. That’s my deal.”

“And you can do that?” he asks. “Keep us safe?”

The burgeoning hope in his voice makes Jess a little tense and sick to her stomach, but she swallows it down. Promises suck. She’s broken more than she can count, let down more people than she can count. She’s going to make another promise anyway.

“Yeah. I’ll keep you safe.”

* * *

The door of the Raymond house is unlocked, when they get there, and Jess’s skin prickles with unease. She reaches out and blocks John from entering with her arm.

“I’ll go first,” she tells him.

The inside of the house is empty, but not orderly – it was probably pretty classy once, like something out of a magazine, but furniture and knickknacks are strewn everywhere. There’s glass shattered all over the carpet. The mantle is empty and its former contents litter the ground in an ugly blast radius.

“Lexi!” John shouts, charging up the stairs like a crazed idiot. “Michelle!”

Jess turns away from the carnage of downstairs and hurries after him. The second floor is a mess too, and just as empty as the first. She finds John in what can only be his daughter’s bedroom, on his knees and clutching at her blue duvet.

Both wife and daughter are gone.

Attack the family to get at the target. It’s a classic, Jess thinks with rage skittering under her skin.

“See? Staying away doesn’t keep the people you care about safe, dipshit,” she grunts, because John Raymond is the only one here to vent her anger on.

Suddenly, she wants to shout those words in Murdock’s face. Really not the time for an impulse like that, so she tables it. Later.

“Please,” he says in a shaky, terrified voice.

He doesn’t have to elaborate. Jess already knows.

“I’ll find them.”

The two of them scour the house, top to bottom, for clues, and reconvene in the dining room to talk over their options. As they do, John’s cell phone buzzes on the table. Just the once, not a continued ring, so probably a text. The two of them approach it like it’s a bomb about to go off, and John unlocks it. There’s a text all right. From an unfamiliar number.

It reads ‘If you want to see your family again, come alone’ before listing an address near the docks.

* * *

When she’s got three people to keep alive, backup might actually be useful. So, reluctantly, Jess calls up Page. She and her gun can keep John Raymond safe and out of the line of fire until Jess gets his wife and kid out. The two of them stay outside while Jess heads in.

The warehouse – god, it’s always warehouses – is pretty much empty except for one guy and the two hostages tied up in the corner. The guy doesn’t look like the type to be fooled by a ditzy persona, but Jess tries it on for size anyway, just to get a little closer before he draws a gun or something.

“Hey! I’m, like, a little lost, do you think you could give me directions?” she asks.

And then, instead of a gun, he pulls out a fucking katana like that’s normal or sane. Jess flicks off the false identity like so much water and rolls her shoulders.

“Seriously? Who uses swords in the twenty-first century?” she demands, not that she expects an answer.

Coincidentally, there isn’t one.

Jess eyes the blade for a second, then tugs off her jacket and flings it aside. She likes that jacket, and she can’t afford a new one, and, well, one leather jacket isn’t going to do much against a fucking sword. The guy nods at her, like this is some honorable fight or something. _Hell no_ , Jess thinks. She’ll fight as dirty as she has to, to get Michelle and Lexi Raymond back.

But the guy with the sword is fast. He dodges one punch, then a second. Jess tries for a kick, and only manages to barely whiff him, so she goes back to hitting with her hands. Not that that works out any better.

He gets her in the arm with the sword, pretty damn deep too.

“Fuck!”

Not to mention he manages to dance out of the way when she goes for a counter-hit with her fist. She can tell she’s going to get real sick of the flippy ninja bullshit real fast. She’s even more sick of the sword, though. Next time he slashes it at her, she feints a punch towards his nose, then redirects to his wrist at the last second. It breaks, she’s pretty sure, and she bends his dumb sword until it snaps and tosses the pieces aside.

 Which ninja boy reacts to by kicking her in the fucking face. She manages not to fall over, but she does stumble back a few steps, and he’s looking pretty smug about it. Dickhead. But then, she knows something he doesn’t.

“See, the thing is,” Jess says, scuffing the blood off her chin, “now I’m kinda pissed.”

It turns into a brawl from there. Rough. Ugly. Finally, Jess snags the guy and swings him right into the wall. The way his head cracks against it satisfies her rage, but it’s also gross as hell. Not that even a likely concussion is enough to keep him down. No, of course not. That just isn’t how Jess’s life goes. She takes another couple of punches and kicks, but in the end superstrength wins out over finesse and she slaps him down so hard he’s not gonna be getting up for a week.

Good fucking riddance.

Michelle and Lexi are still waiting across the room, tied to chairs. Jess tears the ropes apart with ease – again, thank you superstrength – and they stumble to their feet. Only then does Jess put a hand to her mouth and let out a sharp whistle. John rushes in like his ass is on fire, to the delight of his family.

“Dad!” Lexi shouts, leaping into his arms.

“I’m here, baby, I’m here,” John Raymond breathes, pressing his daughter’s head to his chest. “I’ve got you.”

He opens his other arm, envelops his wife as well so they’re one big group huddle of relief. For about a minute they all hug it out while Jess awkwardly catches her breath off to the side. Then the three of them face her and that’s even more awkward.

“Thank you,” John tells her with enough sincerity to make her barf on a normal day.

As it is, Jess just saved three people from a weird-ass ninja cult and she feels pretty good about the whole thing. Except for the part where her vision is going kind of fuzzy. When Jess tries to take a step she sways, drops to one knee.

“ _Shit_ ,” she hisses, good feelings forgotten.

As soon as she leans forward to brace herself on her arms, Jess is able to see that the gash on her arm is turning an ugly, unnatural color. Awesome. Poison. She has no clue what kind, but probably the kind that kills you dead real quick.

She loses the thread a little bit and comes to flat on her back, body wracked with pain, with a gnarled, tough-looking old dude standing over her. Then there’s a clatter of heels on concrete, and oh, there’s Page, gun trained on his chest, not that the guy even spares her a glance. Judging by his eyes, he hasn’t spared anybody a glance in a long damn time.

“ _You_ ,” Page says, and her voice is sharp with recognition, with anger.

Perfect, Jess thinks sourly. If Page knows the guy, he’s sure to be totally balls-to-the-wall, batshit crazy. Because this is totally the entourage Jess wants surrounding her when she finally kicks it.

Trish is gonna be pissed. And then crushed, probably. And then pissed again. But at least maybe her life will be easier, without Jess in it.

Nelson… Hell, Nelson’s got people everywhere. The other lawyers at Hogarth’s firm, his nurse friend, Page… Fuck it, even Murdock if it comes down to it. He’ll be fine. He’s gonna bawl his fucking eyes out first though, she at least knows him that well.

Jess’s delirious mind skips to Luke for just a moment, and that’s almost more painful than the hellfire coursing through her veins.

“… poisoned,” Creepy Old Guy is saying to Page, tone sharp and derisive like she’s some kinda idiot.

Dickhead. Jess might not particularly like Page’s meddling nature, but she’s good at getting to the truth and Jess has at least a modicum of professional respect for her.

Jesus fuck, _professional respect_? She really must be dying.

“Then do something!” Page spits, her voice wavering with anger. “You fight them and you’ve survived this long doing it, you must know the cure!”

“I do. Keep your panties on,” he sneers back, then smacks Jess’s cheek with a gnarled hand.

“Mmrgh,” Jess groans, which isn’t anything close to the colorful string of profanity she was going for.

“Stay awake, girl,” the old guy mutters; his voice is so rough he probably gargles gravel, decides Jess.

“F’kyou,” she manages to mumble past her numbing lips.

“Yeah, that’s the spirit,” grumbles the creeper, hauling her up into his bizarrely strong arms. “You die on me and I’ll be pissed. You’ve got information I need.”

Which is about the last thing Jess hears before it all goes dark.


End file.
